What is a Customer Pain Point?

January 2, 2023/ Jarrod Wright /

Friction in the customer experience isn’t always preventable. It can also seem like a vague concept without a firm definition. But, all confusion aside, this is one area that your business really needs to pay attention to.

If you equate friction and resistance, you’re on to something. Customer pain points are the individual points of resistance your customer may experience on their buyer’s journey. This means anything that could potentially interrupt or impede the sale at any point, from browsing through checkout.

The goal as merchants is to provide as seamless and pleasant a shopping experience as possible for your customers. Any pain point between your customer and a successful shopping experience is likely to cost your revenue.

When various issues pop up between a customer and their ultimate goal (a purchase), they may form a negative impression of your company and choose to shop elsewhere. But, in order to make a plan that could help alleviate this issue, you must understand what these pain points are and how best to respond to them. Let’s take a look at how this happens.

The 10 Most Common Pain Points

Some customer pain points are indirect and hard to identify. Others directly introduce friction into the customer experience. Mitigating these issues will go a long way toward improving your customer journey, and even help to increase your bottom line.
The 10 most common pain points include:

Financial

Either the product costs too much, or added expenses such as shipping are more than the customer is willing to pay.

Financial obstacles are probably the number one pain point for customers. Some people are frugal by nature, some are prevented from purchasing because of financial impediments, and others simply may not be able to afford higher dollar items. In any case, cost will often be your foremost factor.

Procedural

This covers any issue in the order competition procedure. It can be submitting applications, being connected to the right department, overly nebulous terms of service and refund policies, etc.

Procedural pain points indicate that either your servers/internal POS system is in error, or your process is far more complex than it needs to be. It’s wise to perform regular system checks and update when necessary.

Productivity

These include broken navigation, redundant information fields, and other unnecessary, frustrating, and time-consuming experiences.

At their core, productivity pain points are issues with efficiency. The more complicated a customer’s shopping experience is, the less likely they will be to follow through to checkout or return for a secondary sale.

Support

Bad or spotty support service that fails to meet your customers’ needs, both pre- and post-transaction.

Frankly, if you don’t have some kind of 24/7 support service set up to at least register customer issues online, you need one. Additionally, if (and when) your support team is needed, make sure they are fully trained, competent, and able to meet your customer’s needs.

Customer Service

Bad customer service agents and methods can also be a serious hindrance to customers. This would ultimately be a very bad look for your business.

Customer service gaffs are akin to support issues. The difference is the degree to which you’re able to empathize with your customers when addressing their concerns. Remember: it’s absolutely crucial how you speak to and handle customers frustrated with issues on your site.

Transparency

Any hidden fees or costs are always going to cause problems. The same applies for inaccurately labeled products, and damaged or defective merchandise.

You need to be up front with buyers; if they feel you’ve concealed information, or are deliberately deceiving them, they may dispute the charge. In short: don’t hide the details of your products or services. Period.

Poor Mass Communication

Tone deaf marketing campaigns, complex cross-promotion, channels that aren’t communicating, misaligned branding… all of these issues can be filed under this category.

Omnichannel marketing is challenging for any business. Make sure that you’re hiring the right people and aligning campaigns for multiple channels when necessary. Customers should be able to clearly understand the details of promotions, and how to get the best options from your service.

Checkout

Even if a buyer makes it to the checkout page, annoying pop ups, excessive data fields, input entry glitches, and invasive marketing schemes could deter the sale.

To be blunt, any friction introduced at this stage should only be there if it is vital. This is the point at which most of your customers will abandon carts that provide them too many interruptions.

Tracking & Delivery

Not providing tracking information after checkout, no tracking follow-up, late delivery, or lack of delivery notifications is a problem.

A lot of things can happen during delivery. Customers will feel much more reassured if they can keep tabs on their goods and verify that they’re still en route. This is why tracking is essential. Also, for high-ticket items, ensuring that someone is there to receive the delivery by requesting signature confirmation can be very helpful in case of later disputes.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment issues may include items which were not delivered not as ordered. For instance, if the goods are missing parts, are the wrong color or size, are if they arrived damaged.

Purchases need to be fulfilled “as ordered.” There really isn’t any leeway for mistakes at this stage, being that an unhappy customer is fully empowered to resolve the issue with their bank if you aren’t cooperative.

It’s very important to understand that businesses run by human beings are going to run into their fair share of mistakes. But, this is why identifying and eliminating customer pain points is so important. Making it a priority now may save you headaches later on.

Last Update: January 2, 2023