How to Find User/ Customer Pain Points

Ok! First of all, why should we know our customer pain points?

Because;

🤩 Knowing them will take our business to the sky

😓 Not knowing them will take our business to the grave

How can we find our user/ customer pain points? 🤔

Here are 5 strategies to find your customer pain points. 

TL;DR

1. Listen Actively

2. Analyze Data

3. Empathy Mapping

4. Social Media Monitoring

5. Customer Service Interaction

(This is a short form/ summarized blog. Please let me know whether you prefer this format or my previous blogs. Write back to me 🙂).

1. Listen Actively

Speak directly with customers

Discover: Uncover real-time challenges and concerns.

How: Conduct one-on-one conversations or focus groups. (Just have a coffee with your cx ☕) 

Why: Direct communication discovers things that we often missed in surveys.

Send surveys or conduct interviews

Discover: Gain structured insights on preferences and pain points.

How: Craft targeted surveys or conduct in-depth interviews.

Why: Surveys provide quantifiable data and interviews add qualitative depth.

Bonus Tip: Please avoid sending long questionnaires to them. They are helping you here, so make sure to make things easy for them, instead of being a headache 😀) 

Utilize social media for polls and reviews

Discover: Tap into the pulse of customer sentiment.

How: Run polls, encourage reviews, and actively participate in online discussions.

Why: Social media is a real-time feedback goldmine, offering immediate insights and it’s free… 🙂 

2. Analyze Data

Dive into customer feedback

Discover: Identify recurring issues and satisfaction levels. (If you ignore these, they will multiply and come back to you. And remember, bad news has wings. They fly too quickly 😐) 

How: Study customer reviews, comments, and feedback forms.

Why: Uncovering patterns that guides strategic improvements.

Review support tickets to find recurring issues

Discover: Pinpoint specific pain points causing support requests.

How: Analyze commonalities in support tickets and resolutions.

Why: Addressing frequent issues enhances customer experience and reduces support load.

3. Empathy Mapping

Step into your customer's shoes

Discover: Understand motivations, frustrations, and emotional triggers (feel their pain like a mother can feel her child’s cry 🥹) Yeah, fall in love with your customer. After all, the customer is the King (or Queen 😀).

How: Develop personas, conduct empathy workshops, or use journey mapping.

Why: Empathy fosters a deeper connection, helping tailor solutions to genuine needs.

Understand their emotions

Discover: Pinpoint moments of delight and discontent.

How: Gather feedback on emotional experiences, positive and negative (I look at my test users’ facial expressions when they try our app/ product to understand the real feeling they get 🙂)

Why: Emotional insights guide efforts towards enhancing positive experiences and alleviating negatives.

4. Social Media Monitoring

Keep tabs on social platforms

Discover: Track public sentiment, trends, and brand mentions (eg: Twitter / X, Facebook, and Instagram. Look for relevant hashtags, keywords, and mentions related to your brand or industry).

How: Use social listening tools and engage in online conversations (eg: Hootsuite, Brandwatch, or Mention to set up real-time alerts and track public sentiment. Actively engage in conversations).

Why: Real-time insights empower proactive responses and build brand reputation.

Measure customer sentiment through online discussions

Discover: Uncover unfiltered opinions and concerns (eg: industry-specific forums, social media groups, and threads where customers discuss their experiences, challenges, and preferences). 

How: Participate in forums, groups, and threads related to your industry (eg: Reddit, Quora, or industry-specific forums).

Why: Forums are treasure troves of genuine, unfiltered customer voices. These are valuable for product improvement, customer service enhancements, and building stronger relationships with your audience.

5. Customer Service Interaction

Use customer service to inquire about difficulties

Discover: Directly address pain points through customer interactions.

How: Train support teams to ask about challenges and gather feedback.

Why: Proactive inquiry shows commitment to customer satisfaction.

Actively seek areas for improvement

Discover: Pinpoint specific processes or products needing enhancement.

How: Encourage support teams to report recurring issues and improvement suggestions.

Why: Continuous improvement based on feedback fosters customer loyalty. 

Start -> Fail -> Learn -> Start Again -> Grow

Don’t ever stop this. And nowadays, customers like to help you out too. They like businesses who talk to them to learn more. Customers value such businesses and they like their suggestions being heard by the business. When they understand they are being valued by your business, they stay with your brand forever even if you increase the price. That’s called loyalty and it’s very hard to gain. 

If you need proof, read the book “Leading the Starbucks Way” book. And don’t ever stop learning, but learn with your customers, gain their trust, build a loyal customer base for your business who will be with you forever. 

I can help you optimize your LinkedIn profile;

• To stand out among the crowd (because attention is the key now)

• To land in your next dream job (because you are losing $12,000/yr now staying at the same place)

• To start your LinkedIn creator journey (still only 1% users are creators on LinkedIn. Don’t lose this huge potential to grow your personal brand).