Evaluating customers' pain points is the first thing businesses should do when defining their selling proposition. It’s all about figuring out what are the real struggles and what causes them. As a business or startup, you need to be empathetic to your customers in order to get their trust. This is important because if they don’t believe you, you can’t market to them.
Many businesses, though, assume they absolutely understand their target audience and feel all their pain points. However, this is a very common misconception - without proper research and investigation, you can see only the cap of an iceberg and still don’t know the real problems of your customers. Remember don't guess and make any assumptions for any type of situation and definitely not with your business!
Types of Pain Points
Apart from the customer’s actual pain points that products and services intend to solve, they also may experience various issues during and after purchase, such as:
Financial
Convenience and efficiency
Shopping journey
From poor quality products or high pricing to inconsistent customer experience, brands that successfully mitigate all these pain points and provide wholesome services beat the market competition irrespective of the size of the business.
If you want your brand to be on-trend and make your customers stick to it, here is the step-by-step plan to recognise the pain points of your ideal customers:
1. Let the customers tell you about everything that bothers them. Stop talking and LISTEN.
Know your customers first: who they are, what they do, and how your business relates to their lives
Ask open-ended questions
Go into details and develop a deep business conversation
Try not to interrupt and let the discussion flow freely -you’ll be surprised about what are the real problems of your clients.
2. Find the roots of customers’ problems
Try to be sympathetic and look in-depth. Providing solutions will start with figuring out what triggers the personal pain points of your clients.
3. Know their motivation
Dreams and aspirations are also important for understanding customers - if not more than knowing their disappointments. Ask what gets them up in the morning and supports throughout the day? Such information willthem give you a bigger picture and allow you to see real people in your customers.
4. Focus on the most devastating and serious pain points
Usually, customers have many more than just one pain point. If your business can solve all of them, that’s fantastic! But in most cases, due to the specialisation, a business can address only some of them. So it will be more reasonable to start with the most disruptive and acute problems first and gradually move towards less significant ones.
Several methods to run pain-points research:
digital analytics
in-person interviews
surveys
...you can use all of them to get a better vision and access a larger audience!
Identifying the pain points may seem challenging and tricky. While making assumptions is an easier and faster way out, you need to understand what your customers are really thinking about to gain their attention. When you consider the impact of pain on individuals, there will be more reasons for them to do business with you.