Customer pain points: How to identify concerns and tips to address them

Every product or service is designed to address specific customer pain points or challenges. Yet, why is it that only a few are an instant hit among the masses, and the rest pass by unnoticed? Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, you can excel only when you identify and solve the right customer needs.

What are customer pain points?

Customer pain points are the hurdles or problems customers face while interacting with a company, its products, or its services. These issues are critical for businesses to identify and understand as they can significantly influence customer satisfaction, loyalty, and decision-making. Recognizing and addressing these pain points improves the customer experience and helps position a company as attentive and responsive to customer needs, which is a key factor in differentiating it from its competitors.

In order to effectively identify these pain points, companies must adopt a holistic approach that encompasses the entire customer journey. This approach involves analyzing customer feedback across various touchpoints, including sales interactions, customer service communications, and online reviews. Advanced analytics and customer feedback tools can provide invaluable insights into where customers are experiencing friction or dissatisfaction. Directly engaging with customers through surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one interviews can offer more insights into their challenges and expectations.

After identifying customer pain points, businesses must strategize and implement solutions that address these issues. These solutions may involve enhancing product features, streamlining service delivery processes, improving customer support channels, or revising pricing structures. It's also essential for businesses to continuously monitor the effectiveness of their solutions and remain adaptable to changing customer needs. Organizations can foster a more positive customer experience and encourage loyalty by proactively identifying and addressing customer pain points. This ongoing process reflects a commitment to customer-centricity, which is essential in today's competitive marketplace.

Types of customer pain points

#1 Financial pain points:

Financial pain points are the most critical of all customer pain points. Financial pain points occur when customers feel they are paying too much for a product/ service. Your customers love choices, be they current or potential customers. They are always looking for cost-effective solutions that offer them more services for the money invested.

Business owners need to strategize for budget-friendly options and customer-friendly subscription plans so they can meet customer expectations. Customer support teams and account managers should understand customer needs, competitor benchmarks, and budgets to offer an optimally priced solution that caters to the needs of the customer.

#2 Process pain points:

Process pain points may refer to operational inefficiencies along the customer journey. Not only does it affect your customers, but it also impacts your support team. Businesses must identify these bottlenecks to improve the customer experience and agent productivity.

Here are a few questions that can help you reveal if you are facing any process pain points. 

• Do your customers find it difficult to contact customer support? 

• Is there a delay in notifying your customers about the status of their requests? 

• Do your customers find themselves repeating the same information to different agents across different channels?

These process pain points will end up frustrating your customers and result in churn.

Remember, outdated support software or poor internal team collaboration may affect the quality of customer service in the long run. It may result in longer wait times for your customers, resulting in frustrated customers and troubled support agents. A single bad customer experience may lead customers to leave and eventually add to the cost of acquiring new customers.

#3 Support pain points:

Support pain points are often internal issues that may restrict businesses from resolving customer pain points quickly or effectively.

Customer support plays a pivotal role in making the customer journey seamless. For any customer issues, support agents must ensure that each interaction with the team or a chatbot results in customer delight.

The easiest way to help your support teams monitor their performance and identify support pain points is to use omnichannel help desk software. The integrated unified dashboard can help highlight areas of improvement for the support team and stay connected with customers along their journey.

#4 Productivity pain points:

Has your support agent struggled with rerouting queries to the right team? Did they ever have trouble figuring out customer problems? Did your team miss the SLA in providing a solution? If yes, then you might be encountering productivity pain points.

Your customers expect a resolution from your support team as soon as they raise a query. They expect the experience to be seamless for the services they’re paying for. However, productivity pain points may decrease agent productivity and diminish the efforts behind the customer service offered. As a result of these internal inefficiencies, customers may end their relationship with your brand right away or may have a higher tendency to churn.

While process and productivity pain points seem similar, an easy way to understand the difference is to evaluate whether the problems affecting performance are because your team has too much on their plate, or if they are finding it hard to take the next step due to inefficiencies in collaboration or communication. The former is indicative of a productivity pain point that can be mitigated by self-service, canned responses, or AI, while the latter is process-related and requires strategic and systemic change.

How do we identify customer pain points?

Providing a wholesome customer experience helps brands stay at the top of the game irrespective of the size of the business. From concerns around over-priced services, and low-quality products to queries raised for broken links or poor customer experience, brands should be able to address every customer pain point successfully. If you want to improve customer stickiness for your product or service, here are four ways to recognize those customer pain points.

1. Ask the right questions

Your top priority is to solve the major pain points received through customer feedback. If you’re already sending out surveys to your customers and waiting for those coveted insights, you’d most likely think, —Why don’t my customers respond to my surveys? Is there a way to design surveys better? We’re here to provide you with a simple yet effective solution.

Your customers don’t answer your survey questions because of how you ask them about their problems. Your surveys need to be designed to include open-ended questions so that customers can elaborate on their expectations and needs. Only if you ask the right questions will you get the answers and insights you’re looking for. 

You can choose to keep your surveys as simple as possible for customers who hate filling up forms. You can save detailed open-ended questions for customers who volunteer to help with detailed answers or information. Here are some questions you could ask them.

• What problem were you trying to solve when you initially came across our product or service?

• What are the top three benefits you have received from (product or service name)?

• How could we improve (product or company name) to better meet your needs?

• What other roles or titles besides yours do you think would get a big benefit from (product or service name)?

• What would you likely use as an alternative to (product or company name) if it were no longer available?

• What’s holding you back from using (product or company name)?

2. Get your sales team talking

When it comes to garnering customer pain points, you should focus not only on your current customers but also on the lost prospects. Expanding your customer base is imperative and behind every lost deal is an important customer pain point that your product failed to solve. This could be a pricing-related issue or a missing feature. 

You may resort to digital marketing tools for customer insights, but it’s time to get your sales team talking. Find out about prospective customer pain points and use these insights to get them onboarded as your customer. 

The first step is to get your sales reps to write down their observations after every sales pitch that didn’t end up in a deal. Mapping the insights from your salesperson to the feedback on customer surveys can help you decide on the direction your product needs to be moving in.

The analysis should include answers to questions like:

• What were the pain points shared by the prospect?

• What did the prospect like/dislike about the product/service?

• Why did the prospect turn down the product?

• What would have kept the prospect from turning down the product?

• Did the prospect compare our product with a competitor's offering? If yes, which aspect did they compare?

3. Check out online reviews

Reviews are a great way to fish for customer pain points. Monitor what your customers write about your product on social media. Take it up a notch by browsing through customer reviews on leading review sites. 

Peer-to-peer review sites are a rich repository of customer grievances, providing a great platform for brands to understand and address customer woes. With many users taking to online platforms to write reviews, you can even find and leverage the pros and cons of your brand and your competitors from the customer’s perspective. 

Qualitative research goes a long way. Once you accumulate reviews from different sources, head over to community forums to find suggestions that could work in favor of your company. 

Pro tip: It is important to ensure the authenticity of reviews. With fake reviews on the rise, a lack of verification leads to false data. Check the reviewer’s profile, rating pattern, and review date.

4. Closely watch your competitors

Despite your best efforts, there could be certain buyer personas that are out of your reach. However, that doesn’t mean you can never gain their attention. It’s just that your brand messaging doesn’t resonate with the customers’ needs. 

Here’s where a close watch on your competitor brands can prove helpful. Every business uses a different approach to address customer pain points. Analyzing these pain points helps you make an informed decision when it’s time to revisit and revise your customer experience strategy.

Here are the four steps you can deploy as a part of this exercise.

• Evaluate your competitor’s website, pricing, FAQs, and feature landing pages.

• Take notes of the customer pain points for which they have provided a solution. You might have missed out on the same. See how you can incorporate those into your website or as part of your brand messaging.

• Run a Google search of their ads and take a closer look at their marketing copy. These ads target customer pain points the best. Check if your ad copy needs an edit.

• Make a list of the integrations enabled by your competitor’s brand. How are they making their customer experience seamless? Enable integration with software and tools that facilitate the buyer journey for your customers.

5. Analyze customer data.

Customer data offers a treasure trove of insights into recognizing your customers through customer behaviors, preferences, and frustrations. This step involves going beyond surface-level interactions and digging deep into the analytics and data patterns to reveal where customers face the most issues.

Whether it's analyzing website navigation paths to identify where customers drop off, evaluating purchase histories to understand buying behaviors, or using AI-driven tools to uncover trends in customer service interactions, the goal is to pinpoint exactly where the pain points lie.

Using customer data effectively means employing sophisticated data analysis tools and techniques to sift through large volumes of data. Look for patterns in customer feedback, support tickets, and online behavior that can signal problems with your product or service. Integrating a data-driven approach with direct customer feedback offers businesses a comprehensive view of the customer experience.

The insights gained from this analysis should inform your strategy for addressing customer pain points. Some of these strategies could include redesigning a problematic feature, simplifying a process that customers find cumbersome, or identifying new areas for product development.

Remember, the objective is to use the data to solve existing problems and to anticipate potential issues before they impact the customer experience. This proactive, data-driven approach can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, driving long-term business success.

Key questions to consider in your analysis include:

• What common issues are customers facing according to support ticket trends?

• Are there specific points in the website navigation where customers consistently drop off?

• What do purchase history patterns indicate about customer preferences and pain points?

• How do customer feedback and behavior trends align with or differ from each other?

• What potential future pain points can be anticipated based on current data trends?

How to address customer pain points to improve your service experience?

Once you have identified your customer pain points and categorized them further, you need to resolve these issues at the earliest to keep delivering an excellent customer experience.

1 Deploy a feedback management system:

Customer feedback is integral to your success. Implementing a feedback management system that helps you monitor and analyze customer pain points will empower you to stay connected with your existing customers and constantly upgrade your product/services to meet the needs of prospective customers.

2 Optimize customer journeys:

Once you understand if the current solutions being offered address the major customer pain points, you can start the process of overcoming road bumps and offering personalized customer journeys. Another way to check if the journey mapped works for your customers or not is to walk through the process yourself to check for any unexpected delays. You may even want to bring in expertise from across teams to address issues from all angles.

3 Document common customer pain points:

Every business needs to document the most common customer pain points. You can use your knowledge base, self-service portals, or FAQ pages to address concerns raised frequently by your customers. This improves customer satisfaction and helps your support teams prioritize and address pain points that need attention.

4 Automate internal processes:

Internal processes need to be optimized to reduce costs and improve overall productivity. You may deploy help desk software to ensure specific problems are routed to the relevant teams, reducing wait time for customers. You can even use the built-in automation capabilities to auto-trigger workflows for time-based escalations and deliver as per your SLA.

5 Revisit your marketing strategy:

Go omnichannel. 9 out of 10 consumers prefer seamless integrations between communication channels. Having customer service software that offers a unified dashboard with a 360-degree view of customer data helps your teams to collaborate better and deliver personalized experiences across various touchpoints.

Identifying customer pain points is critical for your business

Identifying customer pain points has never been an easy task. You need access to historical and real-time data to learn what your customers want even before they realize it. Most businesses worry about losing their customers due to their inability to understand what customers need and how their support teams can help. The above guide should help you identify and address the biggest challenges faced by your customers.

Remember, when you position your product or service based on customer pain points, they will find more reasons to do business with you.

Common customer pain points

Understanding and addressing customer pain points is essential for any business looking to improve customer satisfaction, increase loyalty, and drive growth. Identifying these issues allows businesses to tailor their products, services, and customer interactions to better meet customer needs and resolve their most pressing challenges.

Below are examples of common customer pain points and strategies for addressing them. These strategies can help businesses turn potential obstacles into opportunities for improvement.

#1 Budget constraints

The Problem: Many customers face budgetary constraints, making them sensitive to pricing and cost-related issues. This pain point arises when customers feel a product or service is too expensive or not worth the investment compared to alternatives. High upfront costs, perceived lack of value, or unclear pricing structures can exacerbate these feelings, leading to hesitation or refusal to purchase.

The Solution: Businesses can help alleviate budget constraints by offering flexible pricing models, such as tiered pricing, subscriptions, or financing options, to accommodate different budget levels. Providing clear value propositions, showcasing the long-term benefits of the product or service, and transparent pricing can also help alleviate concerns. Implementing loyalty programs or discounts for repeat customers can further incentivize purchases by demonstrating value and appreciation for customer loyalty.

#2 Poor customer support experience

The Problem: A poor customer support experience is a significant pain point that can lead to customer dissatisfaction and churn. This issue emerges when customers encounter long wait times, unhelpful or uninformed support representatives, or a lack of available channels to seek assistance. These negative experiences can leave customers feeling undervalued and frustrated, ultimately undermining their trust in the brand.

The Solution: Improving the customer support experience requires a multi-faceted approach. Implementing robust training programs for support staff can ensure they are knowledgeable and equipped to handle inquiries efficiently. Expanding support channels to include live chat software, social media, and self-service options offers customers the flexibility to choose their preferred method of communication. Additionally, leveraging technology like AI chatbots for common queries can reduce wait times and free up human agents to handle more complex issues.

#3 Bad product experience

The Problem: Experiencing issues with a product's performance, reliability, or usability can be a major source of frustration for customers. This pain point encompasses a range of problems, from defects and frequent malfunctions to clunky interfaces and a lack of desired features. These negative experiences can significantly impact customer satisfaction and deter future purchases.

The Solution: Fixing a bad product experience begins with gathering and analyzing customer feedback to identify common issues and areas for improvement. Enhancing quality control processes, investing in product development to refine features and usability, and providing comprehensive user guides or tutorials can help improve the product experience. Offering prompt and efficient resolution to product issues, such as hassle-free returns or exchanges and accessible customer support for troubleshooting, can mitigate dissatisfaction and rebuild customer trust.

Diminish customer pain points with Freshworks

Understanding and addressing customer pain points is not just about resolving current issues; it's about foreseeing and preventing future ones. By identifying and tackling these pain points, you can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, fostering long-term growth for your business. 

To achieve this, having the right tools is crucial. With Freshdesk Omni, you can discover advanced solutions tailored to meet your customer service needs, helping you turn challenges into opportunities and drive your business forward. Join us in redefining customer service excellence.