A customer pain point is a specific problem experienced by your customers at every interaction they have with you and your business.

If you want to build credibility in your brand and gain your customers, and potential customers’ trust, you need to understand their journey and what keeps them happy. If you can find your customers’ pain points, earn their trust, and solve that pain point for them, they will know that you care about them and they will be happy.

You’ll also be one step ahead of your competition!

Different types of pain points

Generally customer pain points fall into four different areas, no matter how big or small those problems are.

Support

Support issues are probably the easiest to resolve. Customers expect to have a certain standard of support from businesses they deal with these days. Whether they have a problem with one of your products, a query related to one of your products or just want more information, they expect to be able to contact you and get the answer quickly.

Some of the most common support issues are those of delayed response, lack of product knowledge, or your business is simply not on your customers’ preferred channel of communication.

These few simple problems can impact your customer retention and also the loyalty they have to your business.

And it’s so simply to resolve. Have options!

Delayed response

This could be solved by ensuring that emails/texts/messages etc., are looked at in a timely manner – look at them on a regular basis a few times a day.

Lack of product knowledge

This refers more to having employees – make sure that your employees know all about your products. Provide cheat sheets if necessary, so they know all the ins and outs of everything you sell.

Put good descriptions of your products on your website and give customers the option of contacting you if they have any problems or questions.

Preferred channel of communication

As well as having email/text/messenger, you could also use some of the more recent tools like live chat and AI chatbots. These allow them to speak to someone in real time.

Finally, always give a contact telephone number, where customers can speak to a person directly, or ask them to leave a message with their number and you will return their call within an hour….AND DO IT!  

Productivity

Productivity pain points often come about because customers expect to have a straight forward and easy experience when they contact a business. They don’t want to spend a lot of time on anything they see as frustrating or inconvenient.

It might be that a product is not how they want it to be, or expect it to be – some kind of inconvenience in using the product. Or it could be that there is some kind of problem with the buying process.

In order to solve this problem, it’s important to convince your customers that your product saves time and effort. This can be achieved by using images and good product descriptions, which explain your product’s features and benefits and exactly how they work and gives value. It could be as easy as having fewer steps in your checkout process.

Financial

The third pain point is financial. This is about the pain of spending money on their business that ends up putting them under financial pressure. This could be through spending a lot on subscription fees or membership fees. Or perhaps paying a lot on repeat purchases. Sometimes, products are advertised as being made to last, but in reality they have to be replaced frequently.

Transparency about pricing also comes into this area. Are there any fees that are hidden that are added on at checkout? Or, perhaps fees go up dramatically and this isn’t made clear.

If you have customers with any of these pain points, your goal could be to show your customers what value they receive when using and choosing your products over your competitors. Also, if they pay a subscription or membership fee, that the value, information and advice they receive is worth every penny. Lastly, be transparent about pricing, then customers know exactly what to expect and there are no surprises.  

Process

A process pain point is about how your business interacts with your customers through your processes. This could be as simple as they can’t get through to the right department when they need to, or that when they submit an order or application for something, that the process is not streamlined enough.

This could be a simple matter of streamlining communication processes to be sure that any queries are answered by the right people at the right time. Make it easier for your customers to contact you and ensure that your products/services are easier to use.  

How do you find out what your customers’ pain points are?

If you don’t know what your pain points are, how can you solve them? It’s important to find out…but how?

Conduct research

There are several ways to conduct research.

• If you have an email list, you could send out a survey to find out if there are any pain points. Questions would need to be specific and written around the four different types of pain points.
• Have a look at your sales pitch. Is there something missing?
• You will have regular customers, but have you had customers that don’t come back for more? Look at your complaints or feedback. There may be a little nugget of information that you’ve missed – a throw-away comment that could give you an insight into why they haven’t come back for more.
• In the same way, look at all your online reviews. Are there any clues into any potential pain points?
• Hopefully, you will have worked on a few buyer personas, but there may be other audiences that you could reach, but you just don’t know why those people don’t resonate with your brand. Do some research on your competitors. If you know that your competitors reach a certain audience that you currently don’t, analyse what they do, and how their products or services reach those people.   
• Look at how your customers interact with your brand. Are there things you could improve? Check that links work on your website and social media. Are you easy to contact?

Customer pain points can be a massive hurdle to you being successful. And finding your customer pain points is not necessarily easy to pinpoint. But, in order to get your customers’ attention and make them want to do business with you, buy repeat products, and use your services etc., it’s crucial to know what those pain point are.

If you can base your products and services on pain points…eliminating as many as you can, your customers will have more reasons to do business with you and there will be less obstacles in the way.