Do you know why your customers leave your business? You’re probably just thinking about the price and quality of your products. It may be about that but it is not all that there is.
Customer pain points are not just shallow reasons why a consumer will not purchase your products and services. They are reasons that make them indifferent to your brand. They vary based on the demographics and reasons of your customers.
Core DNA did a great job in giving a detailed meaning of a customer pain point: “A customer pain point is a real or perceived problem for which a retail or wholesale brand can provide a solution. It starts with brand discovery and ends with a purchase transaction.”
Pain Points Analysis
There are different categories that touch the pain points of every customer. We are going to list down four and analyze each one of them.
Financial Pain Points – as the name suggests, this one touches the financial part of the problems of consumers. It includes the problem of consumers with repeated purchase of the same product. With a repeated purchase of the same thing (not including food), it can be seen as a waste of money. When a product is not as high-quality as advertised, its life-expectancy is lower.
For example, you purchase a chair or sofa that the business said will last for at least five long years. However, just after a year, it was worn out.
It is the same with subscription plans and membership fees. Most of them are monthly or yearly dues you have to pay. It can be a pain point as not all consumers have extra money to shell out of their wallet for just one or two products.
Productivity Pain Points – the second pain point explains that the product is not as efficient and time-saving as the consumers want it to be.
With this one, consumers who are always on the go will complain of it more. For people who are busy, their time is essential for them. They want products that are easy to use, easy to get, and will solve their problems fast.
For example, you have bought a newly released smartphone from a reputable brand. However, you find that it is not as easy to use as your old phone; with this problem comes the productivity and convenience pain points of every consumer.
Process Pain Points – shopping experience or the process as to how consumers get to buy their products are other types of pain points.
Nowadays, consumers want the utmost convenience they can get when buying a product. Whether it is online or in a store, making the entire procedure easy for them is the key to everything. For offline shopping, it is easier to solve their problems, just talking to the staff and welcoming every consumer would do the trick.
However, in the online world, it is very much different. You have to think about consumers searching your brand online, finding your website, social media account, and many more. Now, when they do, you have to make it easy for them to navigate through your website. Making the process easy would reduce some of the pain points they might encounter.
According to the Baymard Institute, the average abandonment rate of an online shopping cart from 2006 to 2018 is 69.89 percent. Last year, the abandonment rate was 75.60 percent, according to Sale Cycle. This just proves that process pain point is a real thing and that it should be addressed properly.
One of the reasons why prospects abandon their shopping cart is that they do not want to create an account but the website is requiring them too. Creating an account is seen as a hassle for them and would take much of their time rather than just buying and purchasing the said product or service as a guest.
Baymard also charted out other reasons:
Source: Baymard Institute
Support Pain Points – After the buying process is done, the business’ obligation to the customer is not finished yet. Many customers will have questions regarding the product and most of them would want fast customer support that could assist them.
When you cannot provide the solution to this pain point, it will largely affect your customer retention and customer loyalty. Repeated purchase or customer loyalty to your product is important.
Identifying Customer Pain Points
It may sound repetitive and cliché but the best way to solve a customer’s problem is by listening to them. Solving the problem by knowing it first through the perspective of a customer is the best way to handle it.
Observing how your customers interact with your brand, whether offline or online would give you an idea. A good example of it would be Word Stream. The company held a conference in their Boston office along with 11 customers where they discussed the experiences of the latter, both good and bad.
This way, they are really digging up and finding the root cause of their customer’s problems or pain points. They would also know the difference between each problem and why and how do they occur. The qualitative research that they conducted really helped as they found out the most hard-hitting problem each of their customers has.
Also, data and information from online tools would actually help you know if your online presence and processes are giving problems to your possible consumers.
Solving Problems Through Root Cause Analysis
Now, if you solve a problem with a band-aid solution, it will most likely come back. You should not only focus on knowing your customer’s problems. Your sales rep and other employees’ problems should be in consideration too because it could be the root cause of some of the surface problems.
According to Mind Tools, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a “popular and often-used technique that helps people answer the question of why the problem occurred in the first place. It seeks to identify the origin of a problem using a specific set of steps, with associated tools, to find the primary cause of the problem.”
It is there to help people determine what happened, why it happened, have a solution for the problem, and stopping it from happening again. It is important for businesses because solving a problem with utmost urgency and necessity is important to prevent future losses.
By knowing the underlying reason behind the problem, be it financial, productivity, process, or support pain points, solving it would be much easier.
