Additional Documentation

Serving the customer better by
understanding their top tasks
Received (in revised form): 15th May, 2018

Gerry McGovern
is Chief Executive Officer of Customer Carewords, where he specialises in helping large organisations
such as Microsoft, Cisco, European Commission and Toyota, deliver a better customer experience
through making customers’ top tasks easier. He has written several books including ‘Transform’
which explains why digital transformation is far more about culture change than technology change
and, his most recent book, ‘Top Tasks – A How To Guide’.
Customer Carewords, Silver Beach, Gormanston, Co. Meath K32YN40, Ireland
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract  The biggest influence on the customer experience, particularly in digital, is the
experience customers have as they seek to complete their top tasks. Digital tends to be a
very functional, utilitarian environment. Even in social spaces, people are very active. People
may not mind wasting time on Facebook with their friends. However, Facebook would not
survive long if people felt they were wasting time uploading pictures or trying to figure out
how to tag those pictures. Time is a brutal determiner of success, and digital leaders measure
customer time in milliseconds, not seconds. Digital is an explosion of possibilities — an
almost unlimited world of content and tools. Yet, what truly matters to people when making
a decision remains very small and concise. ‘Top tasks’ are those things that matter most to
someone when they are deciding to buy a car, choose a university, or select another product
or service. By contrast, ‘tiny tasks’ are those kinds of organisation-centric tasks that explode
with content, often severely disrupting customers’ top tasks journey. Thus, an important
step in delivering excellent customer experience is to remove or mitigate the influence of tiny
tasks. This paper aims to explain how the Top Tasks methods work and how you can apply
them to develop a better understanding of what matters most to your customers.
KEYWORDS: customer experience, user experience, digital strategy

INTRODUCTION
It has never been more important to
understand what matters most to customers.
Trust is at a premium and people are
sceptical, indeed, often cynical towards
brands and organisations. When they visit
a website or app and do not see what they
want immediately, their first impulse is to
hit the back button. Impatience rules.
At the same time, there is an explosion of
content and choice. The world is drowning
in information. How does a company
stand out? How should it connect with
its customers? One option is to pursue

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the traditional model of marketing and
advertising and become one more screaming
voice vying for attention. An alternative
approach is to start paying attention. Indeed,
while traditional marketing has been largely
about getting attention, effective digital
marketing is more about paying attention.
It is not about inventing and designing
customer journeys. What is important is
discovering and supporting the journeys
that customers are already on. Out there in
the digital-land, there are customer-beaten
paths. There are common ways people think
about certain problems or tasks. There are

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Serving the customer better by understanding their top tasks

common ways they will try and complete
those tasks.
What do lean and agile design, minimally
viable product, usability, user and customer
experience have in common? They all put
the customer at the centre. The customer
becomes the co-designer, the teacher, the
journey-maker and mapper.
It all begins with the customer task.
Digital is primarily a task-driven place —
a ‘do’ environment. At the most basic level,
it starts with a search. This is followed by
scanning, selecting and clicking on links.
Such behaviour is active, purposeful and
self-directed.
One way to get found in digital is to
invent your own words and catchphrases,
design and develop your own journeys,
and then market the hell out of them in
order to get customers to search for those
words and phrases, and learn to go on those
journeys. The smart alternative is discover
the words that already matter most to
customers, discover the journeys that they
are already on, and serve and support those
customers in completing those journeys
quickly and easily. This is what ‘top tasks’
refers to.
From the very beginning of digital
design, it has been very obvious that
what the typical organisation wants the
customer to do on its website, and what
the customer actually wants to do, are often
very different things. Unless the customer’s
needs match the latest marketing campaign
or strategic initiative or the organisation’s
grand vision of itself, then the customer
will struggle to do what they came to do.
However, without evidence of customer
needs, designers are largely powerless to
win arguments about creating simpler,
more functional websites. Indeed, many
organisations insist that they already know
what their customers want and that the
websites they are creating match those needs
exactly.
This is where top tasks come in.
Top tasks are about clear, compelling,

statistically-reliable evidence of what the
customer wants (and does not want) to do.
DEVELOPING THE TASK LIST
The first step in understanding what is most
important to customers is to develop a task
list (task ecosystem) that describes the key
things that matter in a specific environment,
such as buying a car or choosing a
university. There are a variety of sources for
customer tasks, including:
●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

Task-gathering preliminary survey: This
involves creating a simple, open-ended
question asking customers what their top
tasks are. It is run at the very beginning of
the task collection process but generally
used only when other sources are weak.
Corporate strategy: Objectives, goals, mission
statement.
Customer feedback, surveys, help: Previous
survey results, frequent help requests, etc.
Site behaviour analysis: Site or app visitor
data to understand the most popular
sections.
Search analysis: Top search terms on the
website or app. Where appropriate, one can
also analyse public web search behaviour
on Google to identify search trends.
Competitor/peer websites: A review of 4–6
competitor/peer websites/apps.
Traditional/social media: What sorts of tasks
are being mentioned by customers on
social media? Do any specialist traditional
media cover the focus area?

The initial task list may have several hundred
tasks. The next step is to work with various
stakeholders within the organisation to clean
it up and reduce it to under 100 tasks. (At
Customer Carewords, studies typically end
up with 50–80 tasks.)
By way of illustration, tasks from a health
survey might include the following:
●●

about the health service (management,
objectives, strategies);

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McGovern

●●
●●
●●
●●

●●
●●
●●
●●
●●

accident prevention, safety;
causes of condition/disease;
check symptoms/signs;
compare hospitals, clinics (services, success
rates, quality of care);
compare treatment options;
confidentiality, privacy, data protection;
description of a treatment/procedure;
diagnosis of condition/disease; and
donate or volunteer.

When simplifying and creating the final
list, try to involve as many stakeholders
as possible. The greater and broader the
internal involvement, the greater the likely
buy-in when results are delivered.
SURVEY DESIGN
Say, for example, you end up with 70 such
tasks. The next step is to present all 70 tasks

(yes, all 70!) in a single randomised list and
ask customers to choose up to five of those
tasks. Survey professionals will say that this
cannot and will not work, and that it is
utterly impossible madness. Time and time
again, they insist, ‘you can’t give people 70
tasks and expect them to choose properly’.
But facts and evidence are stubborn beasts.
This method does work. It has been working
for 15 years now, in more than 30 countries
and languages, with 400,000 people voting
in organisations such as Cisco, Toyota and
Google. Figure 1 presents an extract of what
such survey might look like.
There is a method to the madness. It
is designed to overload. It is designed to
avoid the opinion of the customer and dig
deep into their gut instinct. It is designed to
discover what truly matters, and — just as
importantly — what really does not matter.

In dealing with health, what are the MOST IMPORTANT THINGS to you?
IMPORTANT: Select up to FIVE (5) of the boxes below. LEAVE ALL THE REST BLANK.
Please trust your first instincts and spend no more than 5 minutes on this exercise.
Drug effectiveness, side effects, interactions, dosage
Harmful habit reduction, quitting (smoking, alcohol, drugs)
Risks/side effects associated with a lifestyle/behaviour
Track and share lifestyle changes
Treating minor health problems myself
Find doctors/GPs
Compare private and public medical services
Prescriptions ordering, reordering
Medical equipment (devices, gadgets, aids)
Post-treatment recovery, rehabilitation
Training, courses (antenatal classes, first aid, healthy eating)
Figure 1: A detail from a task list for health

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Serving the customer better by understanding their top tasks

TOP TASKS VERSUS TINY TASKS
Typically, for a survey with 100 tasks, the
top four or five tasks get 25 per cent of
the vote; the next 10–14 get the next
25 per cent; the next 20–30 get the next
25 per cent, and the remaining 50–60 get
the bottom 25 per cent of the vote. In other
words, the top five tasks get as much of the
vote as the bottom 50. The chances of a task
that is in the bottom 50 becoming a top task
are almost zero.
After analysing separate sets of data in
2009, 2012 and 2017, the following patterns
emerged:
●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

After about 50 voters, one can be
reasonable confident that the task that has
emerged as first in the vote will remain
there. At the very least, it is highly unlikely
that it will drop below the first three tasks.
At this stage, the chances that the top tasks
will fall off and become tiny tasks are very
small.
After about 80 customers, the top two
tasks are known within two rank positions.
After about 200 customers, the top two
tasks are known and ranked in order.
After about 300 customers, the top four
tasks are known within two rank positions.
After about 400 customers, the top three
tasks are known and ranked in order. For
most situations, 400 voters are enough to
identify the top tasks.

The largest top tasks survey ever conducted
by Customer Carewords was for the
European Union. In total, 107,000 people
voted in 24 separate language surveys that
were combined together into one master
survey. The top three tasks had emerged by

TINY
(50)

TOP
(5)

SMALL
(35)

MEDIUM
(10)

Figure 2: Example of how voting occurs

the first 30 voters. Yes — even after 107,000
people voted, the top three tasks were
exactly the same as they had been after just
30 voters.
Figure 2, from a representative
anonymous survey, illustrates the percentage
of the vote for each task. The voting trend
shows initial random variations and then
settles down to a reasonably stable pattern.
In some surveys, a clear leader is established
right from the start (Figure 3). This is what is
known as a ‘super task’ (Figure 4).
The implication for a super task is that it
should dominate the design. A hotel has a
‘book a room’ super task and an airline has
a ‘book a flight’ super task. It is therefore
surprising just how often organisations are
not really aware of — or have certainly
not prioritised — their customers’ top and
super tasks.
For each survey, Customer Carewords
calculated the odds of the top task in the

Table 1: How quickly top tasks emerge
No. voters
Odds: 1 of

100

200

300

400

#1 ≤ #11

5 million

2.6 trillion

Infinite

Infinite

#5 ≤ #15

40

390

3200

540,000

#10 ≤ #20

8

18

40

84

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McGovern

10.0%
Task 1.7% (11, 150000:1)
Task 2.5% (21, 410:1)
Task 3.4% (201, 7000:1)
Task 4.3% (731, 19:1)
Task 5.3% (731, 5:1)
Task 6.3% (571, 7:1)
Task 7.2% (551, 4:1)
Task 8.2% (871, 4:1)
Task 9.2% (871, 3:1)
Task 10.2% (851, 2:1)
Task 11.2% (901, 2:1)
Task 12.2% (901, 2:1)
Task 13.2% (891, 4:1)
Task 14.2% (871, 3:1)
Task 15.2% (931, 2:1)
Task 16.2% (931, 3:1)
Task 17.2% (931, 2:1)
Task 18.2% (921, 2:1)
Task 19.2% (931, 2:1)
Task 20.2% (931, 3:1)

8.0%

6.0%

4.0%

2.0%

1
31
61
91
121
151
181
211
241
271
301
331
361
391
421
451
481
511
541
571
601
631
661
691
721
751
781
811
841
871
901
931

0.0%

Figure 3: How task trends over a particular survey

20.0%

15.0%

10.0%

0.0%

1
31
61
91
121
151
181
211
241
271
301
331
361
391
421
451
481
511
541
571
601
631
661
691
721
751
781
811
841
871
901
931
961
991
1021
1051
1081
1111
1141
1171
1201
1231
1261
1291
1321
1351
1381
1411

5.0%

Figure 4: Emergence of a super task

third quartile (50–75 per cent) having as
high a score as the bottom task in the first
quartile (the top 25 per cent). For half the
surveys, the odds were infinite, and the rest

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ranged from 5,500 to 1 down to 157 billion
to 1. Table 1 shows the probability of a task
in an average survey having as low a share of
the vote as the task ten ranks below it.

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Serving the customer better by understanding their top tasks

In essence, this means that there will
always be clear separation between the top
tasks and the tiny tasks, making it obvious
what to prioritise and what to deprioritise.
Of course, it is never easy to deprioritise
tiny tasks because when a tiny task goes
to sleep at night, it dreams of being a
top task. So many digital teams spend
their days defending against the incessant
demands of tiny tasks, preventing them
from spending the necessary resources
to improve the performance of the top
tasks — improvements that will not
simply enhance customer experience but

will deliver greater overall value to the
organisation as well.
ANALYSING BASED ON CATEGORY
AND DEMOGRAPHIC
To dig deeper into top tasks data, category
or demographic questions need to be
part of the survey. In December 2017,
Customer Carewords carried out a health
top tasks survey for the Irish Health
Service Executive. The survey included a
question that asked people their age range.
Table 2 shows the kind of analysis that can

Table 2: Top health tasks by age
Task

≤17
(%)

18–24
(%)

25–34
(%)

35–44
(%)

45–54
(%)

55–64
(%)

65–74
(%)

Total
(%)

1

Mental wellbeing (stress reduction,
mindfulness, positive thinking)

6.8

6.4

4.7

4.2

4.0

3.5

2.3

4.5

2

Check symptoms/signs

5.5

4.0

3.3

3.2

2.7

1.8

1.1

2.9

3

Diet, food, nutrition (healthy eating,
intolerances, weight)

5.5

2.2

2.8

2.2

1.8

2.0

2.1

2.4

4

Right place to go for help (GP, hospital,
pharmacist)

4.8

2.0

2.9

2.8

2.2

2.4

1.3

2.5

5

Emergencies, what to do

4.1

3.4

3.3

2.8

2.2

2.1

3.0

2.8

6

Exercise (benefits, type, fitness goals)

4.1

1.1

1.5

1.4

1.1

1.7

3.0

1.6

7

Costs and fees (treatment, drugs, consultant visits, care)

3.4

5.6

4.6

4.3

4.0

3.1

3.2

4.0

8

Waiting times (hospitals, clinics, other
health services)

3.4

4.7

4.8

5.5

6.1

4.7

5.9

4.9

9

Causes of condition/disease

3.4

2.2

1.8

1.3

1.2

1.6

0.9

1.5

10

Confidentiality, privacy, data protection

3.4

1.8

1.3

1.8

1.7

1.9

0.4

1.7

12

Complications of condition/disease

3.4

0.6

0.4

0.6

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.6

11

Diagnosis of condition/disease

2.7

2.7

2.8

3.1

2.8

3.6

3.0

2.9

13

Living/coping with my condition/disease
(support, counselling)

2.7

2.0

1.9

2.1

2.5

3.1

1.3

2.2

14

Get involved in improving health services

2.7

0.3

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.7

0.4

0.7

15

Treating minor health problems myself

2.1

2.7

1.2

1.6

0.9

1.3

1.3

1.5

17

Weight (managing, obesity, risk)

2.1

1.6

1.6

1.1

1.3

1.1

1.1

1.4

16

Description of a treatment/procedure

2.1

1.4

1.7

0.9

1.2

1.1

1.7

1.3

18

Risks of being in hospital (hygiene,
infections, bugs)

2.1

1.0

1.3

1.3

1.9

2.5

4.2

1.5

19

Screening
(breast check, retinal, bowel, cervical)

1.4

3.2

3.8

3.4

3.7

3.7

2.5

3.6

20

Vaccinations, immunisations

1.4

2.1

2.2

1.8

0.8

1.0

0.9

1.7

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McGovern

be achieved when one combines top tasks
data with such demographic information.
At a glance, one can observe plenty of
commonality of tasks for those aged between
18 and 64. However, those under 17 and
over 65, while having some top tasks in
common, do have quite distinct tasks.
Indeed, if one digs into the data, the task
patterns emerge.
As one can see from Figure 5, check
symptoms is a top task for younger people
but declines in importance as people get
older. Simply put, older people know what
they are dying from.
However, as Figure 6 shows,
understanding how to use health services
jumps in importance for those 55 and older.
Meanwhile, as Figure 7 illustrates, there
is a U-shape for exercise. This is because

exercise is important for younger and older
people, but drops off in importance during
middle age. These kinds of task insights are
useful not simply for digital strategies — by
understanding the task that someone cares
most about, one understands a lot about that
person.
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
TASKS
Because people vote on the entire list of
tasks, one can perform interesting analyses
of the relationships between tasks. Table 3
shows how those who voted for ‘diet, food
and nutrition’ also voted with respect to
other tasks.
The rank column shows what other tasks
were also important to them, while the

Check symptoms: by age (Ireland, 2017)
6.0%
5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%

17 or
younger

18 to 24

25 to 34

35 to 44

45 to 54

55 to 64

65 to 74

Figure 5: Check symptoms by age

How to use health services: by age (Ireland, 2017)
6.0%
5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%

17 or
younger

18 to 24

25 to 34

35 to 44

45 to 54

Figure 6: How to use the health service by age

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55 to 64

65 to 74

Serving the customer better by understanding their top tasks
Exercise: by age (Ireland, 2017)
4.5%
4.0%
3.5%
3.0%
2.5%
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%

17 or
younger

18 to 24

25 to 34

35 to 44

45 to 54

55 to 64

65 to 74

Figure 7: Exercise by age

Table 3: How those who voted for ‘diet, food and nutrition’ ranked other tasks
Tasks

Rank

Original position

Mental wellbeing (stress reduction, mindfulness, positive thinking)

1

2

Exercise (benefits, type, fitness goals)

2

25

Screening (breastcheck, retinal, bowel, cervical)

3

4

Waiting times (hospitals, clinics, other health services)

4

1

Weight (managing, obesity, risk)

5

32

Check symptoms/signs

6

6

Costs and fees (treatment, drugs, consultant visits, care)

7

3

Emergencies, what to do

8

7

Living/coping with my condition/disease (support, counselling)

9

14

Health services near you

10

8

original position column shows where that
task was positioned in the overall vote. The
following three tasks stand out:
●●

●●

●●

‘support to lead a healthy lifestyle’ (3rd
most important to those who voted for
‘diet, food, nutrition’, but 36th most
important overall);
change your lifestyle (fitness, weight,
smoking, drinking); and
find out how healthy you are.

Understanding the interrelationships
between tasks can support design and
content decisions.

COMPARING ORGANISATION
TO CUSTOMER
Often, what the organisation sees as
important to the customer differs from the
customer’s opinion on the matter. As such,
it is very useful to create a copy of the
survey and ask internal stakeholders to vote
on what they think are most important to
customers. Table 4 shows what happened
when this was done for the Irish health
survey.
The empathy between organisation
and customer is much better than one
observes in many other organisations.
The major discrepancy here, however,

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McGovern
Table 4: Empathy comparison: Alignment of the internal team to customer needs
Task

% Customer
vote (3,613)

% Team
vote (66)

Empathy

Waiting times (hospitals, clinics, other health services)

4.9%

6.5%

132%

Mental wellbeing (stress reduction, mindfulness, positive thinking)

4.5%

3.1%

69%

Costs and fees (treatment, drugs, consultant visits, care)

4.0%

2.2%

54%

Screening (breastcheck, retinal, bowel, cervical)

3.6%

2.2%

60%

Diagnosis of condition/disease

2.9%

2.2%

74%

Check symptoms/signs

2.9%

3.7%

129%

Emergencies, what to do

2.8%

2.2%

77%

was with the costs and fees task, where
the internal team assigned roughly half as
much importance (54 per cent) as did the
customers.
SUMMARY
By understanding one’s customers’ top
tasks, one lays the foundations for a great
customer experience. The method outlined
in this paper provides clear and compelling
data to identify these top tasks. Having
identified these tasks, one can measure their
performance. What are the causes of task
failure? What is wasting the customer’s time?
Offline marketing is about getting
attention. Online marketing is about giving
attention. By understanding customer intent
and designing for it, the customer’s success
translates into our success. This is how
Amazon and Google think: become truly
obsessed with the customer, know their top
tasks and deliver relentlessly on them. This is

116

the way to achieve an exceptional customer
experience.
Just as importantly, the identification of
top tasks also identifies the tiny tasks. A great
many websites and apps are flooded with
tiny task features and content. This is stuff
that the organisation thinks is important
but the customer does not. If we want to
simplify and enhance the customer journey
and experience, it is important to remove
as many tiny tasks’ features and content
as possible. This is the whole point of
identifying top tasks.
Further reading
1.

2.

Transform: A rebel’s guide for digital transformation
by Gerry McGovern Publisher: Silver Beach
Publication Date: July 2016, http://gerrymcgovern.
com/books/transform-a-rebels-guide-for-digitaltransformation/ last accessed 12th September 2018
Top Tasks – A How to Guide by Gerry McGovernm
Publisher: Silver Beach Publication Date: September
2018 http://gerrymcgovern.com/books/top-tasks-ahow-to-guide/ last accessed 12th September 2018

Applied Marketing Analytics­ Vol. 4, 2 108–116 © Henry Stewart Publications 2054-7544 (2018)