How to Discover Customer Pain Points and Improve Their Experience

Have you wondered why some eCommerce businesses thrive while others struggle to keep their customers happy and satisfied? The answer often lies in how well they understand and address their customers’ pain points. Your customers aren’t going to stick around for long if they’re constantly facing challenges with your product or service. Identifying these points is essential not only because you have to solve them but also because it can help you deliver a superior experience that keeps customers coming back.

A study also shows that 80% of customers say that they have switched brands because of poor customer experience. This percentage clearly shows how quickly expectations can make or break your business.So, how do you find out what problems they’re facing? These aren’t always obvious and your customers may not be able to reach you all the time.

This blog will explore practical ways to identify customer pain points and proven strategies to address them and improve their overall shopping experience. 

Breaking Down Customer Pain Points

Customer pain points are common issues your customers face when using your product or interacting with the service you offer. These can include delayed deliveries, missing tracking updates, high shipping fees, confusing return policies, and more, all of which negatively affect the customer experience.

Addressing these issues should be a priority if you want to retain existing customers and attract new ones. Resolving pain points quickly not only builds trust but also improves your product or service.

Identifying these pain points can enable your sales team to ask potential customers the right questions during discovery calls. It’s a great way to position your product or service as a more preferable option. Around 70% of a customer’s journey depends on how they feel about the way they are being treated.

Being attentive and responsive to customer needs can differentiate your brand from competitors and significantly impact satisfaction, loyalty, and decision-making.

Being a brand that’s attentive and responsive to customer needs can be a key factor in differentiating it from your competitors. It can significantly influence customer satisfaction, loyalty, and decision-making. 

Understanding the Types of Customer Pain Points

Customer pain points can take different forms, and understanding them is important to improve customer experience. The most common four types of customer pain points are:

1. Financial Pain Points: These relate to the cost of doing business with your brand. Customers may abandon purchases due to high prices, expensive memberships, hidden charges, or limited payment options. Addressing these helps attract cost-conscious buyers.
2. Product Pain Points: These refer to issues customers face while using your product or service. Examples include underwhelming features, complex navigation, inefficient processes, or time-consuming tasks. Improving product experience boosts satisfaction and customer loyalty.
3. Process Pain Points: These arise from inefficiencies in your operations that slow down the customer journey. Problems during checkout, lengthy transactions, slow service, confusing steps, or excessive form-filling can frustrate customers. Resolving these improves satisfaction and retention.
4. Support Pain Points: These occur when customers cannot get effective assistance. This includes unhelpful representatives, long wait times, or missing information. Poor support lowers resolution success and damages trust. Studies show it can take 12 positive experiences to make up for a single negative one.

Top 20 Customer Pain Points 

Every customer faces issues which affect how they perceive your brand. Recognising those issues or pain points can help you improve their satisfaction and build strong relationships with them. Here are the top 20 common points that customers often face:

1. Slow website: A few extra seconds of load time can harm a sale. As customers today expect instant results, especially while browsing. 

Example: A product page taking 6-8 seconds to load may make customers leave for competitors.

2. Complex checkout process: Too many steps, long forms, or mandatory sign-ups can frustrate your customers and lead to cart abandonment. 

Example: Customers abandon carts when asked to fill multiple pages of personal details.

3. Poor website: Confusing layout or navigation drives potential buyers away.

Example: When a customer visits your site but can’t find the product categories easily, they close the tab or may move to a competitor’s site. 

4. Hidden/unexpected cost: Sudden charges at checkout cause drop-offs.

Example: If the cart total jumps from Rs. 999 to Rs. 1299 because of hidden handling fees, it makes the customer feel cheated and misled.

5. Limited payment options: Lack of preferred payment methods stops purchases.

Example: If your online/offline store only supports card payments or cash, but the customer wants to use UPI or another payment method. Then they may quit cart mid-purchase.

6. Lack of personalisation: Customers expect recommendations relevant to their history and behaviour, especially in an era of personalised shopping.

Example: A loyal customer who mostly buys products from you and still sees no relevant or personalised recommendation or offer loses interest quickly. And also makes customers feel undervalued. 

7. Poor customer support: Slow responses frustrate customers.

Example: When a customer reaches customer support with their problem/request and gets a response three days later. 

8. Inconsistent product quality: Variation in quality breaks trust.

Example: The first t-shirt that customer bought is premium quality, but the second t-shirt they bought looks faded or poorly stitched. This breaks customers’ trust. 

9. Complex return/refund process: Lengthy or unclear procedures make efficient refund management critical for maintaining customer trust and encouraging repeat purchases.

Example: If customers have to mail multiple times or wait for a week or two to get a refund for a damaged product. 

10. Delivery delays: Frequent shipment delays erode customer trust and weaken brand credibility over time.

Example: If you promised to deliver a package within two days, and the customer receives it in a week without any updates about the delay. Then the customer might not trust you next time. 

11. Out-of-stock products: Repeated stockout situations signal inventory inefficiencies and disrupt the shopping experience.

Example: If a customer sees ‘out of stock’ often on a popular or needed item multiple times, then they can consider your competitor’s brand. 

12. Irrelevant marketing messages: Mismatched promotions appear disconnected.

Example: You send baby product ads to a customer who has bought gym wear from you previously, then it makes the offer unrelatable for customers. 

13. Poor product descriptions/inaccurate information: Misleading product descriptions reduce trust.

Example: A product description says ‘comfortable sneakers’, but it doesn’t include any size chart or material description, which may cause confusion in customers.

14. Improper post-purchase support: Failing to improve post purchase experience through timely follow-ups and support makes customers feel abandoned.

Example: A customer receives a damaged lamp and contacts your customer support group but gets no reply; then they can leave a negative review.

15. Long waiting offline/online queues: Waiting too long frustrates customers.

Example: If a customer waits for 15 minutes on a chat or offline queue to resolve a simple query, then they can abandon the purchase only. 

16. Technical glitches: Errors during browsing or checkout disrupt sales.

Example: When a customer adds items to their cart, but the site crashes during payment. Then the customer gives up generally after trying once or twice.

17. Lack of transparency in tracking: Customers want real-time updates.

Example: After checkout, if the customer doesn’t get an email to confirm their order or no tracking link to track the order. 

18. Confusing policies of return, warranty, exchange, or shipping: Unclear return, warranty, or shipping policies cause hesitation.

Example: If a customer wants to return a damaged dress but struggles to find the return link or doesn’t understand if it’s refundable or not. 

19. Lack of reviews/feedback: Social proof impacts decisions.

Example: Assume two sellers are selling similar products, but one has no reviews and the other has some reviews. The customer instantly chooses the one which has more reviews and feedback.

20. Poor mobile experience: Bad mobile interface harms sales and engagement.

Example: Small buttons or images not loading properly frustrate buyers.

How to Find and Understand Customer Pain Points

Understanding your customer’s pain points is important to improve their experiences and increase sales. Here are some of the effective ways in which you can find a customer’s pain points:

• Gather Customer Feedback

Ask your customers open-ended questions about the experience they’ve had with your product or service. You can analyse customer reviews online, send them surveys after each customer interaction, and use sentiment analysis to measure customer satisfaction. You can also create a customer feedback form on your website or follow up directly after each interaction to capture immediate customer sentiment. 

• Conduct Surveys and Interviews

Use qualitative surveys and in-depth interviews to dive deeper into their experiences and pain points. Open-ended questions let customers describe issues freely while helping you uncover pain points which numbers can’t reveal.

• Analyse Customer Data

Analysing customer data is one of the most effective ways to find out your customers’ pain points. You can use text mining, thematic coding, or other techniques to extract insights from customer feedback. Analysing customer data can also help you identify common themes and patterns across a large group of customers. 

You can also review customer support tickets to identify recurring complaints and problems. Another great way to analyse customer data is to track user behaviour on your website. It can help you identify areas of friction. Monitor social media conversations, online reviews, and mentions to find out customer feedback and frustration. 

• Conduct Market Research

Conduct market research by observing marketing what your customers want and carefully studying your competitors. Conducting in-depth market research can help you understand your customers’ needs and preferences, and areas of improvement. 

• Use Customer Journey Maps

Visualise the entire process of identifying and understanding customer pain points. You can map out the customer journey to identify potential pain points at each stage of their interaction with your brand. Using customer journey maps to visualise the customer experience can help you understand where they encounter obstacles or feel frustrated the most. 

• Engage with Sales and Support Teams

Regular meetings with sales and support teams and feedback loops will give you direct insights into your customers’ behaviour, preferences, needs, and pain points. You can establish a system where sales and customer support representatives can share customer feedback with product development teams. 

When analysing customer pain points, there are some points you should keep in mind. These include the severity of these pain points, the frequency of these problems, and how these pain points impact your customers’ overall experience with your product or service. Carefully analysing their feedback and gaining insights into their pain points can help you prioritise improvements. Eventually, you can develop solutions to address their most pressing concerns. 

Effective Ways to Solve Customer Pain Points

Understanding and resolving customer pain points is the key to improving satisfaction and ensuring loyalty towards your brand. Here’s how to do so effectively:

• Look for Trends and Patterns

Once you’ve identified customer patterns, look for recurring trends and patterns in customer feedback. Then you can segment customers based on their pain points and prioritise pain points based on impact and severity. You can use analytics tools to track trends and determine common friction points. Identifying recurring issues can be quite easy if you carefully analyse customer complaints, interactions, and reviews. 

• Document Recurring Pain Points

You should maintain a record of problems your customers frequently report. It can help you prioritise pain points and develop solutions accordingly, which can improve customer relationships in the long run. A staggering 72% of customers feel frustrated when they have to explain their problems to multiple representatives over and over again. Documenting pain points can help you prevent this scenario. 

• Make it Easy to Get Help

Your customers should be able to reach you quickly and easily. Offer extensive support via multiple channels such as live chat, email, and phone. A reliable customer support team and quick response times can make all the difference for your customers.

• Implement a Feedback Management System

Set up a structured feedback management system to gather and categorise customer input from multiple channels such as surveys, reviews, and social media. Ensure the process is simple and accessible so customers can easily report issues and share their experiences.

• Share Feedback with the Right Team

Share the feedback and customer insights with relevant teams and departments, including product, marketing, sales, and customer support. Collaborative effort can help you understand and address pain points effectively and quickly. 

• Follow Up with Complaints

Ignoring customer feedback can damage your brand’s reputation and make customers feel ignored. Promptly acknowledge customer concerns and share any updates on resolutions. This can help you prevent any damage to your brand reputation and ensure customer loyalty. A practical approach to following up with customer complaints and a structured feedback response system can help you build trust and demonstrate your commitment to enhancing customer experience. 

• Optimise Customer Journeys

Identify friction in the buying process, simplify checkout, streamline navigation, and most importantly, personalise a user experience to prevent customer frustration. 

• Automate Internal Processes

Automating internal tasks, processes, and workflows can lead to the optimisation of customer journeys. You can also use AI chatbots, CRM tools for eCommerce businesses, and workflow automation to enhance productivity and efficiency. Automating processes can also help you reduce manual errors and reduce response time. 

• Refine your Marketing Strategy 

Tailor your content and ads to address your customers’ pain paints. In fact, 62% of customers prefer content and marketing that address their pain points.

• Develop and Implement Solutions

Improve your product features, streamline process, and enhance support based on customer feedback you receive. You can also include self service options like FAQs and knowledge bases, and communicate updates to your customers clearly.

• Monitor Results

Track customer satisfaction and other metrics after implementing solutions to assess their effectiveness and if there are areas that need further improvement. However, it shouldn’t end here. You should continuously monitor customer feedback to identify new pain points. 

SR Quick: Transforming Customer Experience with Speed and Efficiency

Shiprocket Quick is designed to help eCommerce businesses transform customer experiences by focusing on technological innovations, efficiency, and speed. We have positioned ourselves as a key player in the Indian eCommerce and logistics industry by making local deliveries affordable, quick, and reliable.

We enhance local deliveries with premium features, such as:

• Fastest rider allocation in just a few seconds even during peak hours
• No demand surcharge fees
• Quick deliveries to the right location within minutes
• Round-the-clock deliveries
• Uniform and transparent pricing for all courier partners
• Multiple courier partners (Ola, Borzo, Mover, etc.)
• Cash on delivery (COD) option 
• No minimum delivery distance
• Real time tracking to enhance transparency and reduce delivery queries.
• Automated notifications to keep customers informed.
• Flexible return management to handle returns and improve customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

The best eCommerce businesses not only sell products or services but also solve real problems their customers face. They also understand that addressing customer pain points goes beyond fixing issues. It involves creating a seamless and satisfying shopping experience. 

Every pain point is an opportunity for you to solve and build loyalty in customers and further turn them into repeat customers. Even small improvements like faster deliveries or smoother checkout can provide you with a competitive edge. Also, with experienced partners like Shiprocket Quick, you can eliminate customers’ pain points and offer them faster and more reliable deliveries.