In this episode of Jobs-to-be-Done Radio, the hosts walk through a real Switch Interview about a smartphone purchase. The raw transcript labels the interviewers generically, so we keep them as “Interviewer” rather than guess who said which line. The subject is Becky from Red-Gate software, who explains how she finally decided to ditch her old feature-phone and buy an iPhone. It is a textbook demonstration of the Jobs-to-be-Done interview in action: reconstructing the timeline of a purchase to uncover the real causes behind a switch.
Recorded at the Switch Workshop held in Cambridge, UK in July of 2013, the conversation surfaces every part of the framework. You will hear the first thought, the long stretch of passive looking, the trigger that flipped Becky into active looking, the struggling moment, and the four forces that pushed and pulled her toward a new phone while anxiety and habit held her back. Read on for the key takeaways and the complete transcript, organized by topic with short explainers of the core concepts.
Key takeaways
- A Switch Interview reconstructs a real purchase, second by second. The interviewers do not ask hypothetical questions. They rebuild the timeline of how Becky’s old phone got fired and the iPhone got hired, hunting for the dominoes that actually caused the switch.
- The first thought rarely looks like a decision. Becky was nudged for months by peer pressure before a single night out tipped her into seriously considering a new phone. Most of that stretch was passive looking, not shopping.
- The four forces decide the switch. Push (teasing, a frozen pay-as-you-go account) and pull (friends’ iPhones, simplicity) moved her forward. Anxiety (commitment, being accosted by salespeople) and habit (a phone that did the job fine) held her back.
- People build the case for what they already want. Becky researched four carriers and compared tariffs, but as Bob notes, much of that was assembling ammunition to defend a decision she had likely already made.
- Emotion drives the purchase, not specs. Becky says she was not really concerned with what the phone did. Control, pride, and the fear of being talked into something carried far more weight than features.
- Removing anxiety closes the sale. A free phone she suspected was always free, a callback she could control, and a support group of iPhone-owning friends all lowered the friction enough for her to commit.
Setting up the Switch Interview: filming the documentary
Interviewer: Stage research, how people shop for phones and buy phones. So months down the road we’re going to do this real official, big research project. This is like easy, casual conversation just about how people shop. So the best way to think about it is we’re filming a documentary, and there will be times when we ask like real general questions, where did you buy it, that sort of thing. Then there will be times when we say I want to set the scene. Who were you with? What time of day was it? If you’re online looking up phones, were you in your living room? Were you in your office? All the details I want, right?
Interviewer: So you can think about . . . it’s like holding the camera. How do we film this whole thing? So no wrong answers, it’s your story, so whatever happened happened. If you can’t remember something, that’s fine too.
Interviewer: I know it’s fresh . . . just imagine it’s here. You know all these people.
Concept · The Switch Interview
Why we film a documentary, not run a survey
The Switch Interview opens by handing the camera to the customer. Instead of asking what features matter, the interviewer rebuilds the scene: the day, the room, the people, the weather. Concrete detail unlocks real memory. The goal is to reconstruct the timeline of an actual purchase, not to collect opinions about products in the abstract.
Anchoring the purchase in time
Interviewer: So when did you buy your phone?
Becky: It was about three months ago, just finished my three month evaluation period then I had to give another three months . . . this data trial, so I’ve just been . . . so April?
Interviewer: April? End of April?
Becky: Yes, mid April.
Interviewer: Mid April. And so was it a weekend? Weekday?
Becky: It was a weekend.
Interviewer: Weekend. Saturday? Sunday?
Becky: Saturday I think. Yeah, because it was a bank holiday when it should’ve been delivered and it had to be delivered on Tuesday.
Interviewer: Oh, so Monday was a bank holiday? What bank holiday would that have been then?
Becky: So that must’ve been May. No, it’d be Easter weekend maybe. Easter weekend. We got that . . .
Interviewer: So you went, Good Friday was that Friday and then Saturday’s a new phone?
Becky: Yep.
Interviewer: Wait, wait, wait. I want to . . . so did you go to the store and buy it?
Becky: No, it was online. I didn’t talk to anybody. No, I talked to people on the phone.
Interviewer: But not online?
Becky: I researched it online, then I talked to a few people on the phone. I had been planning to . . . I guess one of the reasons I hadn’t been doing it for a long time was because I had been planning to go into the store and try those phones, and that put me off because finding the time to do that, and also being accosted by people in phone shops put me off.
Anxiety and habit: “being accosted” in the phone store
Interviewer: And so did you ever do that? Did you walk in a . . .
Becky: No. By other people’s opinions.
Interviewer: You said the word accosted at a phone store. What does that mean?
Becky: So I think in my head it was like if you go to a phone store, they want to make a sale; they want to make a commission. I didn’t know what I wanted enough, and I’m quite susceptible to the pressure from salespeople so I was just really worried. I didn’t like making a decision when I didn’t know what to make.
Interviewer: Why do you have that opinion? When’s the last time you were in a phone store and got accosted?
Becky: It wasn’t even me, it’s probably . . .
Interviewer: Do you remember somebody telling you about that or something? Oh, so you were with someone and you watched them like whoosh, right onto them?
Becky: Yeah.
Interviewer: So who was it?
Becky: So last time my boyfriend needed a phone which was two years ago.
Interviewer: So two years ago he renewed his contract and you said oh my gosh . . .
Becky: Just really hard sell, yeah.
Interviewer: What did you do? Like I can’t take this, I’ve got to like step out . . .
Becky: I just wandered around and looked at some of the other phones. Yeah.
Concept · The Four Forces of Progress
Anxiety and habit hold the switch back
Two forces drive change: the push of the situation and the pull of a new solution. Two forces hold it back: the anxiety of the new and the habit of the present. Becky’s fear of being accosted by salespeople is pure anxiety, strong enough that she rules out the store entirely. Her old phone, which did the job fine, is the habit keeping her in place. Until those bottom-half forces are addressed, no amount of push or pull produces a switch.
What she was switching from
Interviewer: So who’d you buy it with?
Becky: So I went with Vodaphone, and it’s easier on my wallet.
Interviewer: And what else did you look at?
Becky: So I looked at the Samsung, I don’t remember what model it is, the newest one was just about to come out. And I’ve looked . . . I’d go, I can’t remember names, but the previous one that my friend at work has.
Interviewer: Which has?
Becky: Bryan, Bryan Harris.
Interviewer: Bryan Harris has a Samsung.
Becky: Galaxy, is that it?
Interviewer: Galaxy. Do you know which one? Big? Small? Colorful?
Becky: Big. It’s quite big. The screen’s quite big.
Interviewer: And you were able to use it?
Becky: Yes, he let me play with it. And showed me the features.
Interviewer: And what did you have before? What phone before?
Becky: So it was a Samsung. It was like a slidy thing. It was pretty old. I got it in like 2009, ’10? So it was like three or four years old, and it’s just like a little black and white thing. It had a bit of color on the screen, but . . .
Interviewer: But it slid up? What was that?
Becky: So the phone’s like this, here’s the screen, and you can slide up and it has a keypad.
Interviewer: Oh, it has a keypad. Oh. Numbers? Or like a full . . .
Becky: Yeah, the numbers. Yeah.
Interviewer: So you could text by pushing three three times . . .
Becky: Yes.
Interviewer: Do you miss it?
Becky: No.
Interviewer: But no Internet?
Becky: No Internet.
The first thought: peer pressure and a night out
Interviewer: So what was going on around Easter?
Becky: I guess I was just getting to a point where . . . I don’t know, I was starting to use my phone a lot more. Then I had it out a lot more. Then a lot more people were saying to me why’ve you got that phone? That was actually the main reason, peer pressure.
Interviewer: So that was Easter. Do you remember the flight . . . tell me the first time you actually had a thought. Because it sounds to me like you didn’t mind this phone.
Becky: Yeah, I didn’t mind it. I didn’t mind it. It did what I needed to do, which was I texted people and I made phone calls. That’s what I did at the time.
Interviewer: And if you hadn’t had peer pressure, you would’ve stayed with . . .
Becky: I think so, although actually now that there’s a bit of retrospective, I guess it’s now I’ve got it. But I’ve started writing a blog and on my blog I do a lot more with social media and stuff like that, writing, stuff that I write for that. So now I use it a lot more. But whether that would’ve . . .
Interviewer: Yeah. Did you get a new job at that time or promotion or did you go on vacation or anything?
Becky: No, I don’t think so.
Interviewer: Okay. Tell me about he first time you had the thought, you looked at your old phone and just said I need to consider something explicitly different.
Becky: Explicitly . . . it’s hard because I think for a long time my phone was a bit of a rubbish phone. I was a bit embarrassed by it.
Interviewer: But you liked it.
Becky: Yeah, I didn’t mind it. I didn’t want to give into peer pressure.
Interviewer: So I want to know . . . everyone else is like come on, why are you using that phone? And you’re pushing back. I can hear you saying I like my phone. You use that phone; I’m going to use my phone. What was the first time you looked at it kind of like that? You know, it might be time for you to go?
Becky: I think I was out, a night out, and I was texting a friend quite a lot and a lot of people said to me what’s with the phone? And I did look at it . . .
Interviewer: When was that?
Becky: It was March.
Concept · The Timeline
First thought, passive looking, active looking
Every switch has a timeline. It starts with a first thought, often a vague background noise like Becky’s months of peer pressure, then drifts through passive looking, where the idea is alive but no action is taken. A specific event, the teasing on a night out, flips passive looking into active looking. The interviewer’s job is to find that flip and the dominoes around it, because that is where the real causes live.
The night out: the trigger event
Interviewer: Okay. It wasn’t that long ago. Friend’s birthday? So around Cambridge? Where were you?
Becky: I was in Cambridge, Old Spring.
Interviewer: What was it called?
Becky: Old Spring.
Interviewer: You there tonight?
Becky: Yeah, we should go.
Interviewer: So we can text other people.
Becky: Yeah, you can text other people while you’re out and be really anti-social and get in trouble with your boyfriend.
Interviewer: Okay, so boyfriend’s there. Was it his birthday?
Becky: Yes.
Interviewer: It was his birthday? Who were you texting?
Becky: Just friends.
Interviewer: We’re going to uncover something. Who were you texting? Who’s your friend? What’s your friend’s name?
Becky: I’m not telling you.
Interviewer: Oh, it’s a he. Okay.
Becky: Oh, this is really embarrassing isn’t it? Hmm.
Interviewer: Okay, so . . .
Becky: Wait, did someone tell you the motive for getting my phone?
Interviewer: No, so at some point your boyfriend turns to you like . . . what does he say? Put that down?
Becky: Yeah, he’s like I’m being anti-social. I was. I was, but in my defense I was with all his friends and they were talking about fantasy and I was pretty bored.
Interviewer: You don’t have anything to say so you’re like I’m going to entertain. You can text on that phone and you can text on your old phone. Why do you care what phone you had?
Becky: I think it’s because I had it out and people were like laughing at it, and I just kind of thought you know what? It’s time . . .
Interviewer: His friends were laughing?
Becky: Yeah.
Interviewer: What were they saying?
Becky: Just like commenting on the phone I’ve got, commenting on the software in general. A smart phone . . . you work in marketing, you don’t have a phone . . .
Interviewer: Okay. So when’s his birthday? March what?
Becky: 29th.
Interviewer: You better . . . okay, March 29th. When was the first time you looked? So like that night. I can see you, movie starts playing. It’s like there’s . . .
Becky: A whole saga. So I guess after that I did think it’s probably time to join the future.
“I had it out and people were like laughing at it, and I just kind of thought you know what? It’s time . . .”Becky
The cost anxiety: pay-as-you-go and the commitment-phobe
Interviewer: But was it like Sunday morning? Or was it . . .
Becky: Oh no, I don’t think so. I think it was probably a week or so later. So another big thing for me was the cost. I was on pay-as-you-go, so that’s another thing, it was costing me like ten quid a month. I re-upped when I needed to and I guess I didn’t have Internet on my phone. I couldn’t really use it that much. So it was also a big decision for me to move to a contract. I’m a bit of a commitment-phobe, and I didn’t really want to have to sign up for two years with the same carrier. And I knew it would be a lot more money. And I knew I could afford it, but it was kind of a mental block I guess. This is how much I’m spending at the moment on it.
Interviewer: Tell me about re-upping as you . . . is that something you do right on your phone? Or do you have to call somebody? What do you do when you start to run them out? Does it tell you that you’re running out?
Becky: Oh, yeah, it will just like tell you. So you try to make a call it’ll say you need to tap up.
Interviewer: What did you do to tap up, though? Did you have to go somewhere?
Becky: Oh, just phone up an automated . . .
Interviewer: So it wasn’t that hard to do?
Becky: No, a bit easy.
Interviewer: So you were saying more . . .
Becky: It was, although actually now that I say that, it started to get to a point where I think I’d have to renew a card and the new card expires. That got really difficult. It locked me out of my account.
Interviewer: When was that?
Becky: So that was probably a couple months before.
Interviewer: Before what?
Becky: Before I started to think about maybe . . .
Interviewer: So before March 29th?
Becky: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you got locked out at some point. And how long were you locked out?
Becky: Only for like an evening, but I had to bring them up and I’d get through and talk to a person because it was quite an evening and I was trying to go out somewhere . . .
Interviewer: Were you missing texts and missing things?
Becky: No, no, I wasn’t missing anything. It was just frustrating because I had no money on my phone and I knew I needed to be out the weekend. That means I’m not making calls.
Interviewer: So give me kind of the timeline of that whole thing. So why not just re-up it before you go out? Call up, give them the new card.
Becky: Yeah, that’s what I had to do. It was just kind of annoying. They said something to do with . . . what was it? It was something to do with . . . I don’t know, it was some kind of fraud prevention day, so I had to go . . .
Interviewer: Oh, so the card gets locked or something?
Becky: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wouldn’t let me like link my card to my account, so even when I ran out, I had to go through security without my card.
Interviewer: Did you try doing it before you went out for the weekend? Did you try to re-up or clear?
Becky: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do and it just like . . .
Interviewer: Then it’s like I’ve got to go. I don’t have time to deal with this.
Becky: Yeah, it was just . . . because then I have to actually talk to someone.
Concept · The struggling moment
Where the energy to switch comes from
The struggling moment is where a customer’s current approach stops working and the energy to change is created. For Becky it is a stack of small frustrations: a frozen account, an evening locked out, the dread of running out of credit before a night out. None of these is dramatic on its own. Together they build the push that, paired with the teasing, finally makes the old phone something to be fired.
The boyfriend’s iPhone and the pull of simplicity
Interviewer: And so a little time after that is when you said all right, I’ve got to look. Did you actually go online? Did you see ads in the papers? When did you really start to . . . like spend some time looking?
Becky: So, as I said, I thought about buying a phone.
Interviewer: So when did you notice Bryan’s?
Becky: Oh, I think as well, my boyfriend had just got the iPhone 5.
Interviewer: When did he get that?
Becky: Like maybe two months before I did. He just got it because . . .
Interviewer: So he had the iPhone 5 and you didn’t. So how’d you know Bryan had a Samsung Galaxy?
Becky: Because he’d got it quite new and he was talking about using it.
Interviewer: And what were your impressions?
Becky: I really liked it, but it was quite big. It was quite big, and I needed to fit it in . . . so I think it’s easier for guys with the big jeans pockets. I wanted something smaller. My other one was a bit smaller.
Interviewer: Bigger than this? Smaller than this? So you wanted something smaller. So you looked at it and go this is really cool?
Becky: Yeah, I really liked it. I think I’m finding I knew . . . I knew loads of my friends have an iPhone, and I thought that would mean if I’ve got one and I got stuck using it, I could ask them.
Interviewer: Oh, to help you?
Becky: Yeah, because I didn’t want to have to spend ages getting to know how to use something new. I just wanted to be able to use it. Because my old one I can use . . .
Interviewer: But this sounds like . . . nothing attracted you to this thing. It was like . . .
Becky: It was just a phone, I guess. It wasn’t like wow, it does things.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Becky: It was what I expected, right? But it was just more flashy I guess.
Interviewer: I think it’s because . . . I guess with my boyfriend, I guess I played with his quite a lot. And it just always seemed really . . . it just, I don’t know, it just seemed really simple. Everything’s really simple. You can see it all on your screen.
The decision: a free morning on the couch
Interviewer: So when did you actually start to invest the time to look? When did you go okay, I’ve got to figure this out?
Becky: It was quite a snap decision at the end, that Easter weekend, just thinking okay, you’ve got to sort this out. It’s been too long. Just give yourself half a day and just do it.
Interviewer: A half a day?
Becky: Yeah, I just wanted to get it sorted because I kind of knew, but I think what pissed me off was I was worried it . . . I know I’m bad about making decisions, and I was worried. I was agonizing over all the different options. There’s so many different options out there that it would just . . .
Interviewer: What were you worried about?
Becky: Making a decision. Trying to make a decision.
Interviewer: So how did we get to that website? Saturday morning . . . it’s almost like Friday night, okay, tomorrow I’m getting up. Did you plan this? To say . . .
Becky: I didn’t really plan it. I guess I just had a free morning on my own.
Interviewer: So tell me about it. Was it morning? Evening?
Becky: Morning.
Interviewer: It was morning? Where were you?
Becky: In my living room on the sofa.
Interviewer: All right, so if I’ve got this right, boyfriend heads out to play golf. Got time to figure this out. Coffee?
Becky: Tea.
Interviewer: So going in, you knew you were going to do it? Or it’s like I was doing the research but I’m not sure?
Becky: Yeah, I’d say it was probably more I do the research and see how much this is going to cost me. So it still wasn’t 100% I’m going to do this today. It was like sitting down and doing research.
The drive to do it herself
Interviewer: And he was busy? He was busy. He knew he’d be out. If he knew you . . .
Becky: To be honest, actually, so I guess I knew . . . I wanted to make the decision myself. I didn’t want someone telling me you should be doing this; you should be doing that or that’s a really good deal or that’s a really bad deal. I felt like I wanted to stay no, I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself and I’m doing it.
Interviewer: So if he was around, he would’ve been like oh, let me help you?
Becky: Yeah, in a nice way but he would’ve been . . . I think he would’ve been just like get the iPhone, get the iPhone, get the iPhone. Which obviously I did.
Interviewer: But it’s your decision.
Becky: Yeah, it’s my decision. I didn’t want somebody being like I don’t even know why you’re looking at these other phones.
“I guess I knew . . . I wanted to make the decision myself.”Becky
Interviewer: Hang up one second. Do you see the drive in that? When she says I want to do it myself. He had to be gone for her to do it. She had to have the time to go do it. Very, very big domino there. If she never had the time, she wouldn’t have done it. She needed to be by herself and not with him looking over the shoulder, you should do this one; you should do that one. So part of it is when do you have the time to actually pick? And all she was really trying to do at this point in time is do enough research to arm herself not to get accosted when she walked in the store.
Inside the method: finding the causality, not the story she tells herself
Interviewer: So we do this for big clients, right? We use a focus group room, the one-way mirror or whatever. If you’re behind the one-way mirror like you guys are right now watching, it looks like the person is just in utter pain. It’s like they’re beating her up; they’ve got the lights on her and stuff. Is it painful?
Becky: It’s not painful, but it’s a bit . . .
Interviewer: You’ve got everybody watching you.
Becky: Yeah. I guess you feel a bit like ah, why did I do that? Why did I make that decision? It is more emotional . . .
Interviewer: So she doesn’t know. When you really start to do it, they’ll say I bought it because everybody else had it. I mean they make stuff up. They give themselves the reason what it is. So when we do your surveys and say oh, why’d you buy the iPhone? Oh, because it has so many apps and everybody else has one. The reality is when you start to look at it, there’s a whole host of reasons why you got the iPhone and we’re trying to find the cause and linkages that get her to having this in her pocket. And so it’s not what they think it is and say it is. I say it’s the lies you tell yourself of why you want something. Oh, it gets great gas mileage and it’s cheap. And when you really start to analyze it, there are five other options that are cheaper and five other options that get better gas mileage. Why don’t you buy that one? It’s for other reasons. And that’s where the details are.
There is a catalog of actual interviews along with analysis available here.
Interviewer: Becky, how are you feeling right now?
Becky: Feeling powerless. I just feel like . . . I don’t know. I didn’t realize there were so many deep reasons why I got my phone.
“I didn’t realize there were so many deep reasons why I got my phone.”Becky
Mapping the forces: anxiety, support groups, and the fear of commitment
Interviewer: For me, that’s enough causality. So what we’re trying to actually do is find the causality, and there’s things that hold her back from buying this thing which is I’ve got to do it by myself; I need some time by myself; I don’t want to be accosted. And then there’s things that cause her to do it which is hey, if I buy this one, I’m stuck. I can ask somebody. But if I buy this . . . I’ve got to go to Bryan. Because again, I probed. Is there anybody else? Is there anybody else? I didn’t find anything. And so that whole idea of a support group is one of the reasons why she picked the iPhone.
Interviewer: So what it is, is we have a framework. And so the whole thing is we have buckets we want to basically get to, and part of it’s what we’ll call the timeline. So we’ll say this happened and this happened. So we’re trying to find the dominos that fall together to say that’s how the iPhone got to her. And what we’re trying is to find the big dominos that really cause it to happen as opposed to the things she tells herself.
Concept · The Switch Interview
Dominoes, not opinions
The interview is not after a list of features. It is after the dominoes: the chain of events and emotions that tip a person from one solution to another. Bob keeps probing the emotional spikes, the locked-out evening, the teasing, the fear of being stuck, because each spike either pushes the customer forward or holds them back. The framework gives the buckets; the timeline gives the order.
Interviewer: So you were afraid of being tied to a contract. By the same token, you were also . . . you also hung onto a phone for four years. And then were you also afraid you’d be stuck with this phone for a long time?
Becky: Yeah, that’s completely . . . Yeah, no, you’re right. I was afraid I’d be stuck with it. Like I said, I knew I had one for years so I knew it was a completely irrational fear, but I also knew how quickly they released new ones. I guess I had a bit of a fear of I’m going to spend all this money, then two months later it’d be like iPhone’s old again.
Interviewer: So the other part about it is we’re not . . . as consumers, we’re not rational. It’s all energy and it’s all emotions, so you’ll find things like that will never correlate. So we’ve done work on dieting and things like that. It’s like you exercise and you run every day and this day you had a hard say at work and you came home and you ate a whole gallon or pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. It’s like why didn’t you go out and exercise again? This is the same thing. You had a phone for four years; how could you be afraid of having a phone for two years? Things change. Information . . . it’s like they never compare.
Building the case: comparing carriers and tariffs
Interviewer: So you’re on Vodaphone. I want to know what did you see? Where did you go first?
Becky: So I see a sea of phones, so I’m thinking . . . A sea of phones. There’s so many options. I think by this point I’ve kind of decided you know what? It’s going to have to be . . . just make it easy for yourself, Becky. It’s going to have to be either iPhone or Samsung.
Interviewer: Okay. Samsung’s still in the running?
Becky: It’s still in the running. It’s absolutely still in the running. But I have to be honest. I think partly because I’m stubborn and I didn’t want to just get an iPhone because my boyfriend as one, but I also kind of . . . yeah, I know. It’s stupid. But I also kind of felt like that was my big issue, because if it was easier to just use an iPhone then maybe I should just do that.
Interviewer: So did you think about what’s my life going to be like if I buy this Samsung?
Becky: Yeah, and then I thought . . . it did come back to that thing, if I’d known that people who’ve got an iPhone and I know they find it really easy to use, and friends are like . . . girlfriends, they find it really easy to use? I just thought I don’t want to be there with my Samsung thinking I don’t know how to use it. And saying you should’ve just gotten an iPhone then you’d be able to use it.
Interviewer: So clearly this conversation’s going on in your head . . . so what did you click into? Did you go into iPhone? Did you go into Samsung?
Becky: I think I did a comparison between both of them. Selecting the options.
Interviewer: What were you comparing?
Becky: Just the . . . what’s the word? Like tariffs? Like what data you can get, what calls you can get.
Interviewer: Oh, so it’s like the plan?
Becky: So at this point I’m not really concerned about what the phone does. In fact, at all I’m not really concerned about what it does. I’m concerned about how much I can get for my money and how much it’s going to cost me.
Interviewer: You’ll see a pattern of . . . we’re not going to expose all this now, but you’ll see a pattern of like learning and then validation. So it’s like I want to do it all myself. Leave me alone. I don’t need you chirping in every few seconds. I need to figure this out. But when I get to the point of decision making, it’s like hey, can you tell me if this is good . . . I need everyone around me to kind of say you’re not doing something wrong.
“I want to do it all myself. Leave me alone.”Interviewer, summarizing Becky’s mindset
Interviewer: But the other thing is she doesn’t want to be ridiculed anymore. So the other thing is she wants to be able to defend her decision and not say well, you just bought it because Owen bought it or Owen helped you do this. There’s an independence and some pride there that’s like I want to make sure I did it myself. And I do want to know what I’m getting into, but I need to defend it, because part of the reason of the causality of her wanting to switch is the ribbing she’s getting from everybody.
Interviewer: And so the thing is in some cases she was shopping, but the real question of what she was doing is building the case of what to buy. So that’s really . . . and to be honest, everybody does it. We all build the case. So in some cases when we say we’re open to something, the reality is we’re really not. We’re just trying to build a case.
Working the carriers: Orange, Three, and back to Vodaphone
Becky: So then, well, I did make . . . so then I phoned up Vodaphone. No, no, I didn’t. No, then I looked at other carriers. So I went to Virgin Media because I have my TV. And I knew they did deals for existing customers. I went to Orange because that’s . . . I guess that’s who my boyfriend’s with and I know they do really good friends. But I knew Vodaphone’s got the best coverage in our house, so he can’t get calls downstairs which is kind of annoying when you’re at the house.
Interviewer: So is Orange even an alternative?
Becky: Orange I was really disappointed with, because in my head they have this great reputation. It’s like they’re the cheapest people to go with. And their website was really confusing. It just had all these different panda, tiger type thing. It was silly. And they weren’t really that cheap, and I think they might’ve been one of the first ones I rung up because their website was so confusing. I had to ring them up, and the guy was just really unhelpful.
Interviewer: So because of the bad website it caused you to call them?
Becky: Yeah.
Interviewer: What’d you ask?
Becky: I said I don’t understand your website. I just said like have you got any deals basically? And the guy was just very unhelpful and just really like our best deals are probably on the website. [Laughter] Yeah, because they update that quicker than they get the information to us. And I’m just thinking . . .
Interviewer: So then where did you go?
Becky: So I looked on Three.
Interviewer: Sweet, two friend suppliers and you go to Orange then you say no, no, no, I want to go to somebody new like okay . . .
Becky: I think that was because another friend knew someone who worked at Three and said I’ll see. So at this point I am actually texting people.
Interviewer: On your old phone?
Becky: Yeah. Saying this is the kind of deal I’m finding. Is this a good price?
Concept · The Four Forces of Progress
Push and pull are never enough on their own
Becky had plenty of push and pull. She was being teased, her account had frozen, her friends had iPhones she could lean on. Yet she still circled four carriers and texted friends for validation. As Bob and Chris point out, that activity is the bottom half of the forces at work: anxiety about commitment and the need to defend the decision. Closing the sale meant lowering that anxiety, not adding more features.
The close: a free phone and a callback she controlled
Becky: So at this point I bring up Vodaphone. And talked to I forget what his name was, some guy, and I said existing customer, I’ve been with you a long time, can you do me any deals? Actually, no, that’s not quite true. I said I’m really interested in this deal but I can’t afford to buy it because it’s 150 pounds and that’s too much money. And he literally went let me see what I can do. Yeah, you can get the phone for free. [Laughter]
Interviewer: Wait, wait, wait. Slow down. So how did you feel when he came back and said you can get the phone for free?
Becky: So part of me felt, because I work in a sales organization, so part of me was like I know what you’ve done there. It was probably always free. But part of me felt like yeah, I really appreciate that. And honestly I thought when people say to me oh, I can’t believe you’re paying 30-something pounds a month, I can say but I got the phone for free.
Interviewer: Okay, so the way to get around it is to say I’m going to charge for the phone. You know what? It’s free anyways, but I’m not giving it for free on the site. I’m going to actually let people know . . . basically feel like they’ve negotiated it. Now there’s more pride, like they’re in the game now.
Becky: I guess it made me feel like I was a bit in control of my own decision, and it kind of did make it an easier decision for me.
Interviewer: But you didn’t buy it, though. Did you say . . .
Becky: I said let me think about it for a few minutes. And he said okay, I’ll arrange a time with you to call you back later today. I said I’m looking at other providers. So we setup that time, and to be honest I hadn’t really made the decision in my mind but I needed some time to sit and think on it because I wasn’t planning to go ahead and buy . . .
Interviewer: So what did you think about it after you hung up the phone? Do you remember? Like . . . what I’m picturing is like click, it’s over. It’s like no mental energy anymore. Are you still sitting on the couch?
Becky: Yeah, I think I went home and did something else because I was like yeah . . .
Interviewer: Were you looking forward to his call? Or were you like I’m not sure; you still have angst about it?
Becky: I was, but I remember I had a bit of angst like should I still negotiate a bit? Should I drive a bit harder? Am I just accepting what’s on the website, a bit mug, like . . . yeah, I remember thinking that. He was going to call back and I’m going to have to turn him down. So I think, yeah, I was kind of . . . I don’t know. Yeah, I remember kind of feeling a bit of angst, like is it just an easy . . . am I an easy sell?
Interviewer: So what did you do when he called back?
Becky: I said yeah.
Interviewer: Here’s my credit card.
Becky: I said hmm, I’ve been thinking about it.
Interviewer: He played it up too?
Becky: Yeah, yeah, I’ve been having a think. But then I said yeah.
Interviewer: Did you push on him?
Becky: I think I asked how quickly he could get it to me, then he said they’ll get it out next day, which again is probably what they do anyway.
Interviewer: So he’s doing you another favor?
Becky: Yeah. Then Danny sets it all up. We have a chat about . . .
Interviewer: A long chat about what?
Becky: Waiting for the credit check to go through. So at this point we’re friends.
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