Pain Points: Definition, Types, and How to Identify Them

Pain points are one of the most important aspects for business people to understand. By knowing customer pain points, business people can get many benefits from upstream to downstream in the marketing flow.

Making your business the solution to every customer problem will prolong the sustainability of the business itself.

Identifying pain points generally involves the sales, marketing and customer service teams. Only then will the development team implement the findings from the identification process.

To find out more about what pain points are, the types and how to identify them, see the full review below.

What Are Pain Points?

Pain points refer to problems, difficulties, or inconveniences experienced by customers in their experience. The experience in question includes the experience of using products, services or other processes that they experience.

These are areas where customers feel frustrated, dissatisfied, or feel that their needs or expectations are not being met.

In the context of resolution, pain points can be categorized on a small or large scale. An example of a small-scale pain point is a face-to-face service experience that can be immediately overcome by disciplining the officer concerned.

Meanwhile, an example of a large-scale pain point is one that is related to product quality and therefore requires major evaluation in the mass production process.

What are the Types of Pain Points?

Maybe you think customer pain points have many and unlimited types. However, generally these can be grouped into several large categories.

The following are the types of pain points that customers can feel:

Financial pain points

Pain points also relate to finances. It could be that customers feel that the price of a product or service is too high compared to the value they receive.

Customers may also feel that they are being charged unexpected additional costs in the process of purchasing or using the product. Apart from that, customers can also be disappointed when the payment process is considered too complicated or inefficient.

Process pain points

Process pain points are obstacles faced by customers in various processes related to using a product or service. This hampered or slow process includes several things such as:

• Purchase Process: Too many forms to fill out, complicated verification process or long authorization.
• Delivery Process: Delays, damage, packaging, etc.
• Slow Customer Service: Slow response when customers need help.
• Return or Refund Process: The return process is too long and complicated.

Productive pain points

This type includes any issues that hinder efficiency or generally make the customer's life more difficult, not easier.

This situation is usually experienced by customers in the B2B industry, where the complicated processes experienced by customers can be automated by your business.

Support pain points

Customer service is one of the main aspects of business. When customers have difficulties, a good help center service must be prepared.

This service assessment also includes the performance of resources that deal directly with customers. When the response is not as expected, customer disappointment can arise.

How to Identify Pain Points?

After knowing what is meant by pain points and their types, the next question is how to identify them?

Identifying pain points is an important process in understanding deeply how to make the right decisions. The following is a more detailed explanation of some methods to identify it:

Active listening

Interact directly with your customers through various communication channels such as social media, email, or face-to-face meetings. Give them the opportunity to talk about their experience with your product or service.

Capture any complaints, concerns, or frustrations they have.

Data analysis

Leverage the data you have to identify patterns that indicate areas where customers may be experiencing difficulty or dissatisfaction. This could be customer feedback data, product usage analysis, or data from customer service.

By analyzing this data thoroughly, you can identify potential customer pain points and take steps to fix them.

Survey or questionnaire

Create a survey or questionnaire for customers with structured questions about their experience with your product or service.

Ask open-ended questions that allow them to give direct feedback about what they like and don't like.

These surveys can provide valuable insight into what difficulties or obstacles customers are experiencing.

Competitor analysis

Conduct competitor analysis to understand what your competitors are doing. This is necessary to find out the plus points of the product that will make it more preferred by customers than other products.

Identify where your competitors may be less effective or where their customers are experiencing dissatisfaction. This can help you identify opportunities to solve existing pain points.

Direct observation

Observe the use of your product or service directly. Pay attention to how customers interact with the product, what gets in their way, and where they might struggle.

These direct observations can provide invaluable insight into customer pain points that may be difficult to detect through other methods.

That's the information you need to know about what pain points are, the types, and how to identify them.

Proper identification allows you to solve current problems, as well as anticipate future problems even when developing products.

Understanding the concept of pain points is said to be one of the right ways to deal with dynamic situations in managing a business. Improve your business analysis skills by taking the Strategic Business Analysis short program from Prasmul Eli.

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• Introduction to Strategic Business Analysis
• General Environment and Scenario Analysis
• Industry Analysis
• Competitive Analysis
• Internal Analysis
• Core competency Analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Business Model Analysis
• Customer Pain & Gain Analysis

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