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No matter how successful, every business faces one common challenge: customer pain points. Whether it’s long wait times, unresponsive support, or unclear product information, these frustrations can lead to customer churn, negative reviews, and lost revenue.
In fact, according to a recent survey, 96% of customers will leave a company after a single bad experience. That’s a staggering figure for any business aiming to retain loyal customers.
But what exactly are these pain points, and how can businesses effectively resolve them? The smallest friction in the customer journey can snowball into bigger issues, from communication breakdowns to product misunderstandings.
In this article, you will discover the most common customer pain points, backed by industry data. You will also be able to offer actionable solutions to transform your customer experience. Let’s dig in!
A customer pain point can be defined as a specific problem your customer or prospect experiences during all the interactions across different touchpoints.
The very first step for businesses is to understand what customers want should be part of your customer service strategy. By identifying pain points, businesses and entrepreneurs can craft an appropriate value proposition that attracts customers to resolve their problems.
If you don’t understand your customers’ pain points, how are you going to solve their problems?
Every business builds products or services to resolve specific customer problems. By having an in-depth customer pain point analysis, you can group them into four broad categories.
Customer support is one of the important business functions. With improper support, most of the crucial areas are impacted. Customers may have product-related queries and most of them would expect prompt customer support. Some common support issues are:
When entrepreneurs fail to deliver the right solution to the above customer pain, it impacts customer retention & loyalty.
Pro Tip
One of the best ways to exceed your customer’s expectations is by helping them in real-time, with digital engagement tools like live chat, co-browsing, and AI chatbots.
The process pain points are when the customer expects a more streamlined experience when getting in touch with businesses. They want to make the most of their time to avoid frustration. Some examples of productivity pain points are:
Pro Tip
Businesses need to convince their customers that their product is the key to saving time and effort. You can use images and product descriptions that explain how your product helps practically.
The financial pain points indicate the pain of spending an excessive amount of money on the current business that ends up with financial strain. The financial pain point of customers can be:
Pro Tip
The main goal for businesses should be to prove to the potential customers the right value they will perceive in choosing your products.
The process pain points refer to how businesses interact with customers by choosing different methodologies and processes. The process-related pain points can be:
Pro Tip
Brands need to ensure that they are able to meet customer queries faster with the right team and by persuading their prospects that your products/services are easier to use.
Discovering customer pain points impacts both your sales and marketing strategy. The sales team identifies the pain points so as to tailor their pitch and present the products as the right solution. And marketers want to understand these pain points so that they can advertise their solutions effectively in an appealing way.
That’s why identifying client pain points is so crucial. Conducting pain point analysis is an essential stage in improving the experience of different types of customers. Let us discuss the proven ways to figure out consumer pain points.
It is very important to discover exactly what your customers want. Conducting a qualitative market study includes mapping customer journeys and evaluating data regarding customer pain points. Some vital steps for conducting research are:
One of the best ways to identify customers’ problems 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. Here are the key reasons why listening to customers is beneficial.
In order to effectively manage customer pain points, businesses first need to develop trust and confidence before offering solutions to customers. Adding live chat is a great way to know customer demands and the issues they are facing. Here is how live chat helps to discover customer pain points and offer effective solutions.
By using live chat, your agents will get tons of customer-driven data and find issues that often frustrate customers. Start a free trial of live chat with REVE Chat and take a solid first step ahead towards identifying customer pain points.
62% of customers want marketing content that speaks to pain points. Regular conversations with your customer-facing teams, be it sales, customer, or marketing teams help to gain valuable insights into your customer perception. Here are the key benefits of having regular conversations with your teams.
When businesses have a fair idea about their client’s pain points, it becomes easier for them to approach them in the right manner. By using the right tools and strategies, you can deliver a consistent experience across customer touchpoints. Let us discuss innovative ways to fix the customer pain points across the customer journey.
Being in a long queue to get assistance is one of the biggest customer pain points. Delays in response time can frustrate customers and create a negative service experience. Unhappy customers are more likely to share their experience with bad word of mouth.
Your goal should be to respond and solve all customer issues quickly and go above and beyond customers’ expectations. 82% of customers say the number one factor to great customer service is having their issues resolved quickly.
A faster response is a key attribute of customer experience.
Pro Tips
With live engagement tools like co-browsing & video chat, you can provide faster support and reduce the number of touchpoints. Video chat helps to identify issues faster and offers effective solutions in the first go via personalized chat.
65% of customers expressed frustration over inconsistent experiences or information presented across channels. Distrust builds when companies create inconsistent experiences across channels.
Customers reach out to businesses across various online and offline channels and expect consistent support across all channels. As you build and evolve your customer experience (CX) practices, you need to avoid frustrations that can drive customers away. You need to know that omnichannel customer experience is the new norm.
By understanding recent shifts in the customer buying landscape and the multiple dimensions of CX consistency, you can design the right approaches to develop lasting relationships with your customers.
Pro Tips
Delivering 24/7 customer support is a common customer pain point to solve. Scaling the support team comes with some unique considerations that range from additional costs to extra time. Enhancing your availability to engage customers 24×7 is vital for acquiring and retaining customers. Here are several ways to make sure your customer service is “always-on”.
Pro Tips
Balance your support tasks with both live chat and chatbot to deliver a better conversational experience. With bots as the primary contact, you can answer simple queries and transfer complex chats to the support agents for effective handling.
Having a poor-quality product is one of the most common customer pain points faced by small businesses or enterprises. Brands and marketers can’t afford to overlook product quality as it has a direct impact on increasing customer retention, building brand trust, and boosting your ROI.
Perfecting product quality has numerous benefits for any company. The positive correlation between product quality and sales should be reason enough to make quality a top priority in a business strategy.
Pro Tips
The trust, credibility, and loyalty that come from happy customers build repeat sales and ignite positive recommendations about a product that helps a company reach new audiences.
Today’s customers expect agents to have increasingly detailed knowledge of products, services, and company policies so they can achieve first contact resolution (FCR). Not being able to receive updated brand information becomes frustrating for customers.
Customers lose trust when they encounter agents who do not understand their products, services, or the importance of contributing to a positive experience. The expectation is that agents will be a reliable resource for guidance and resolution without having to expend exorbitant effort in explaining details.
Pro Tips
Around 87% of customers abandon their carts during checkout if the process is too long or complicated. It means that you can really lose out if the UI/UX on the checkout page is poor.
Building up customers’ motivation is really key because we want to ensure that we’re making the most of an opportunity. This motivation means that we have to engage the customer and reduce all the barriers of conversion. The more we can engage, the more we can be compelling and sell to them.
Attracting visitors to your website, offering them a superior user experience, and making them buy from you are all challenging aspects in themselves. But keeping your customers interested in buying while they provide their personal and payment details on your checkout page is an even greater challenge.
Pro Tips
Businesses can not persuade customers if they do not want to buy unless you clearly understand what it is your customers really want.
Knowing and understanding customer needs is at the center of every successful business, whether it sells directly to individuals or other businesses. Once you have clear knowledge, you can use it to persuade potential and existing customers that buying from you is in their best interests.
Pro Tips
Customers get frustrated when companies don’t “feel their pain.” It is expected that the severity of their issue will be recognized and responded to with the appropriate attention. If they are at risk of leaving, they want the company to acknowledge the issue and commit to taking action in order to save the relationship.
Quite possible that businesses might not be able to provide effective solutions all the time. But certainly, they can provide the right empathy phrases or words at all the points of interaction to deliver a positive experience. Being polite and empathetic helps in improving customer experience in healthcare to a great extent.
Pro Tips
With the proper empathy statements for customer service, you not only make your clients feel valued & heard but also level up the morale of your team. The biggest advantage of being polite and patient with customers is that businesses highly engage individuals.
Effectively understanding and addressing customer pain points is crucial for building a positive customer experience. Below are some common pain points faced by customers, along with real-world examples and practical solutions to resolve them.
One of the most frequent challenges customers face is affordability. High prices can deter customers from making purchases, especially when they see similar products at a lower price elsewhere. This is particularly common in industries like SaaS, where premium features are often bundled into expensive subscription tiers.
A small business may be interested in your project management software but find the pricing too steep for the features they need. As a result, they look for cheaper alternatives, even if those lack the functionality they desire.
Offer flexible pricing models, such as pay-as-you-go plans or à la carte options, where customers can select and pay only for the features they need. Additionally, providing discounted pricing for long-term contracts or offering a free trial period can make your product more accessible to budget-conscious customers.
Customers expect quick, efficient support whenever they encounter an issue. Your delaying responses or unhelpful solutions can leave them frustrated and negatively impact their experience with your brand.
A customer trying to resolve a payment issue waits for hours or days to receive a response from your support team. In the meantime, they might lose trust in your brand and even consider switching to a competitor with more responsive customer service.
Invest in live chat tools or chatbots to offer real-time support, providing instant answers to common questions. Automating ticket routing systems can also ensure that urgent issues are prioritized. Additionally, training your support staff to provide more personalized, efficient service will help enhance customer satisfaction.
Customers want simple, intuitive experiences when using a product or service. When processes are overly complex or poorly designed, they can become a source of frustration and lead customers to abandon your product.
An e-commerce site with a complicated checkout process—such as multiple redirects or requiring too much information—can cause customers to abandon their cart mid-purchase, costing the business revenue.
Simplify the user journey by streamlining complex processes and ensuring the interface is easy to navigate. For example, minimize the steps in the checkout process and allow customers to store their information securely for faster future purchases. Additionally, offers helpful guides or tutorials for complex features to smooth the learning curve.
Customers expect personalized experiences. Generic messaging or irrelevant offers can make them feel undervalued, reducing their engagement with your brand.
A returning customer who frequently purchases fitness equipment receives generic promotional emails for unrelated products, making them feel like the brand doesn’t understand their preferences.
Leverage customer data to create personalized experiences, such as recommending products based on previous purchases or sending targeted emails with special offers. Personalized customer service, where support agents reference past interactions, also helps create a stronger connection between your brand and your customers.
Many customers prefer to solve problems on their own without having to reach out to support. When self-service tools like FAQs, knowledge bases, or chatbot assistants are missing or difficult to find, customers feel trapped and frustrated.
A software user encounters a minor bug but cannot find a troubleshooting guide online, forcing them to wait for the support team’s response. This delay could be avoided if there were easily accessible resources available.
Create a comprehensive knowledge base or help center where customers can find answers to common questions and resolve issues independently. Implementing AI-powered chatbots can also provide quick solutions by guiding users through common troubleshooting steps. This not only improves the customer experience but also reduces the load on your support team.
By identifying and addressing these common customer pain points, you can improve customer satisfaction, build stronger relationships, and retain loyalty. The key is not just to solve problems, but to proactively prevent them by continuously refining the customer experience.
To understand how addressing customer pain points can lead to better outcomes, let’s explore a real-life scenario involving a retail business and a common problem: slow customer support.
Imagine you have an online fashion retailer that sells a wide range of clothing and accessories. During your seasonal sale, the customer service team is overwhelmed with queries about order status, returns, and product availability. One customer, Sarah, experiences a delay in receiving her order and tries to contact support. After several attempts and long waiting times, she becomes frustrated, leaving a negative review and considering shopping with a competitor next time.
Sarah’s main issue is the lack of quick, efficient support when she needs help with her delayed order. For the retailer, the problem lies in the inability to handle a surge in inquiries during busy periods.
To resolve this issue and prevent it from recurring, the retailer adopts a hybrid customer support system, combining AI-powered chatbots and Live Chat support agents. Here’s how the solution works:
You can introduce a chatbot on your website and mobile app. This can instantly answer frequently asked questions, such as checking order status, return policies, and product availability.
For example: Legrand is a global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. They are using REVE Chatbot to reduce the number of basic inquiries going to the human support team and provide their customers with immediate assistance on their order delays.
The chatbot is designed to identify more complex or sensitive issues (like complaints or requests for refunds) and routes tickets directly to a human agent. In Sarah’s case, once she flagged her issue as a delayed delivery, the chatbot could connect her with a Live Chat agent who could look into her order and provide a personalized update.
For example: PG Jewels is a famous manufacturer of crafted jewelry. They are using REVE Live Chat, and providing their customers with Instant communication, Omnichannel support, Offline messaging, Visitor analytics, and Customizable chat widgets. These features of Live Chat help to connect with potential customers and turn them into leads.
Customer pain points can be the biggest hurdle in building strong customer relationships. By putting the right efforts into identifying and understanding customer pain points, you can easily align your service to meeting customer happiness goals.
And when it comes to knowing customer pain points, there is no better way than having top-class customer support tools at your disposal. Sign up to get the right support tools and move ahead towards delivering value to customers.
Hence, it is important to map out customer journeys, understand their needs, and remove all the friction to deliver a delightful and smoother experience.
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