How to uncover customers’ pain points to provide solutions

Chances are, if you own a business, it’s because you uncovered a way to deliver a service or product your customers needed. And if your business is successful, it’s likely because you’re delivering a high-quality solution for those needs. Still, once you’ve begun to scale, it may be time to revisit what brought your customers to your door and whether they’re staying there or moving on.

Customer satisfaction is never guaranteed, even when you have a loyal customer. However, a survey from McKinsey shows the companies that work to improve customer satisfaction are able to increase revenue by up to 15 percent, plus lower the cost of doing business up to 20 percent. In other words, it pays to find your customers’ pain points and fix them along the way.

If you think that sounds like a tough challenge, it can be. However, the following tactics can help you improve what your customers experience when interacting with your company.

Customers expect companies to care about them, and if you don’t meet those expectations, your customers are willing to walk away. Data shows nearly 10 percent of your revenue may be lost when you don’t deliver. What’s more, if you retain as little as 5 percent of your customers, it can boost your bottom line by up to 95 percent.  

A simple post-purchase survey can quickly give you important data that will show how you’re showing up for your customers. When developing surveys, try to remain focused on your objective, which is to uncover any pain points within your customer journey. A great survey will help you find potential red flags within the products or services you provide and can give you the data you need to uncover pain points for your customers and increase loyalty.

Your sales team has their pulse on the services or products you’re offering and how the market responds. Whether they are out selling in person, taking calls, or answering questions online, a good sales strategy should involve pulling out your customers’ pain points to deliver your company’s solutions. Salespeople use those pain points to help them try to make the sale or determine how your product or service can benefit the customer.

If what you offer isn’t connecting with a customer, your sales team will know. They’ll have first-hand information for you to glean that can help you identify the barriers that may exist with your company. With this data, you can determine how to create solutions that meet the needs of your customers.

Social listening is an outstanding tool that helps you see the relevancy of your company. It can help you identify problems that exist with your company or products, and it gives you the opportunity to talk directly to the people experiencing it. It may even give you direct ideas about what needs to be fixed in your process or with your products.

Back in 2009, Domino’s launched its “Pizza Turnaround” campaign after they used social listening to uncover harsh criticisms of its pizza. The company used this feedback to confront their biggest issues. They overhauled their recipes and delivered a new, innovative customer service program, and nearly doubled their profits in less than 10 years. In fact, they are still on pace to double those profits again by 2025. In other words, it can pay to tackle the issues you learn about from social media, where people are often more candid about their experiences.

Once you know any issues your customers may be experiencing—whether it’s a cost hurdle, a customer service issue, a product problem, or something else—it’s important to take a customer-centric approach to fixing it. A customer journey map gives you visual data and allows you to visually explore the touchpoints your customers have with your company and where breakdowns may happen.

As you map the journey your customers take from discovery of your business to post-purchase insights, you’ll need to dig into the insights you uncover and be honest about the hurdles that may exist along the way. As you map out the journey, identify the pain points your customers may experience to provide a solution. A pain point may be a lag in the sales process, cost, a website with a lack of information, or something completely unexpected. Spending the time to brainstorm ways to remove obstacles can help you improve your customer experience and build loyalty—and sales—along the way.

When you have the insights available to you, you can more readily supply the solutions your customers are looking for and clearly provide them with the information they need to become loyalists. Quite simply, providing solutions to a customer’s pain points is good for business.

Jim Allen is a business leader and entrepreneur who has built one of the top-producing real estate groups in the Triangle. He is President of The Jim Allen Group, which is consistently named one of the top real estate teams in North Carolina and even North America.