Discover customer pain points – then fix them: CX will soar

So you want to improve your customer experience (smart move, since 84% of companies who work to improve their CX report increased revenue). But, where to start? The simplest answer is: identify your customer pain points.

These are any road blocks or obstacles your customers and prospects encounter throughout their buying journey. They could be as big as a data breach, or inaccurate stock information, or as small as slow page-load times.

Before you can make something better, you need to know what’s wrong with it – the opportunities for improvement.

Too often, companies get wrapped up in their internal processes and priorities, and make changes based on their wants or needs. But customer experience is – as the name suggests – all about the customer, their wants, and their needs.

So, understanding and resolving their pain points should be a clear focus of your customer experience strategy.

What is a customer experience strategy?

Your customer experience is made up of “every interaction that a customer (or potential customer) has with your brand”. Every touchpoint, every impression, every engagement plays into your CX.

Therefore, the definition of customer experience strategy is a businesses plan of action for intentionally designing (and measuring) for that customer experience.

A great customer experience strategy should answer the questions:

1. What is our current customer experience? (Point A)
2. What is the customer experience we want to deliver? (Point B)
3. How, specifically, are we going to get from Point A to Point B?

Note: your customer experience strategy isn’t theoretical. It’s a tangible document that outlines tactics, benchmarks, and success metrics for every team in your organization. And, it should be shared company-wide to ensure everyone is aligned on the goals, and how to achieve them.

Why is having a customer experience strategy important?
Because your customers’ experience is the #1 brand differentiator (more than product and price). And 89% of companies today compete primarily on the basis of CX.

Not having a strategy behind your experience takes you out of the driver’s seat. You may know where you want to go, but you’re not in control of how you get there.

How to identify customer experience pain points

Ready to start pinpointing your customers’ pain points? Here are a few tactics to get you started:

1. Get to know your customer: In order to design a customer-centric experience, you need to know your customer. Who are they? What’s important to them? And of course, what are their deal-breakers in CX? It’s important to remember that working for a company or brand does not make you the target market. What’s important to you may be inconsequential to your audience, and vice versa. So, instead of relying on gut instinct, turn to your customer data. Getting a clear picture of your audience helps step in their shoes and see which mountains are really molehills, and which molehills are actually mountains.
2. Analyze your social chatter: People tend to post on social media when they have either a really good or really bad experience with a brand. So, if you’re searching for pain points or customer service problems, check your feeds. See what people are sharing online and look for patterns. If someone shares a bad experience they had on your website, and lots of people comment that they had a similar experience, it’s likely an issue needs to be addressed.
3. Look to your experience data: Another spot to scout out patterns and trends? Your customer and user experience data. Monitor your web traffic, bounce rates, customer service interactions, and look for hot spots or bottlenecks that may be causing issues. Are more people than average bouncing off your site from a certain page? Has your customer service team seen an influx of tickets since a new product line launched? Are you seeing an uptick in abandoned shopping carts? Noticing negative trends is just as important as keeping an eye out for positive ones. They provide valuable insight into where changes may need to be made.
4. Finally… go to the source. (Just ask!): Of course, if you want to know your customers’ pain points, who better to tell you than your customers. Seek out feedback requests to understand the things that make and break their customer experience. You can incentivize feedback as part of a customer loyalty program, and position it as a way to help drive the brand. This helps get them engaged, involved, and invested. Not only that, but getting feedback directly from customers opens you up to insights of pain points they’ve encountered with other brands, which you would not glean from your own data.

Take control of your customer experience

Customer experience has never been more crucial to business success. Thankfully, it’s also never been easier to deliver the experiences that customers crave.

Identify and solve for your biggest customer experience pain points. Then, use those insights to drive your CX strategy, and you’ll be right on-course.