Operational Excellence
Successfully finding the pain point to answer what is, you take one step closer to the key to unlocking endless treasure. Today, OPEX will find you the answer in the following article.
Your wealth is directly proportional to your pain point understanding – the pain of your customers! Through this article, OPEX will point out the key points for you to understand what your customers need. At the same time, evokes emotions that make customers make purchase decisions quickly.
First, before going into the definition of what pain point is, let’s take a look at Uber and Grab’s case study. The two leading startup brands in the world and also competitors! How do they understand customers’ pain points? How does Grab leverage Southeast Asia’s pain point to take over Uber’s overall market share here?
Pain point of traditional Taxi is a great opportunity for Uber and Grab
Customers traveling by traditional taxi always have pain points such as having to call the switchboard, then wait for the car to arrive, not knowing in advance the cost, the taxi meter is only how much they pay. Paying for traditional taxis is also complicated and time-consuming when using cash, ATM cards or credit cards. Traditional taxi drivers also have pain points such as: running around to pick up passengers is very expensive, has many roads, the driver’s address is unknown, so it is easier to travel longer and longer. The cost of investing and managing a large fleet of taxis is also a pain point for traditional taxi companies.
Uber is an on-demand transportation service that has revolutionized the taxi industry worldwide. Uber’s business model allows everyone to order a taxi to their address in the shortest time with just one smartphone in hand. Prices fluctuate depending on different situations, which is one of the important aspects of Uber’s business model. When demand goes up, the price per kilometer will automatically increase. Prices also depend on the number of cars available and the number of callers.
Uber has been very successful in the world before and started approaching Vietnam market. However, the model that only allows payment by credit card and does not allow changing the travel route has become a pain point Uber created for customers.
Grab in Southeast Asia won over Uber because it solved two pain points that Uber did not solve. Firstly, Grab allows payment in cash, consistent with the culture of cash consumption very popular in Southeast Asia. The second is that Grab allows changing routes, which usually takes place in this area. And just by addressing these two pain points from customers, Grab won a convincing victory over the giant Uber.
What is pain point?
Pain points are specific issues that your target audience is facing.
We often view our customers as “gods” – meaning we always have to be innovative and creative to satisfy their needs and emotions. Customers choose to buy from you and not from another unit because they feel happy to own the product / service and will feel uncomfortable / upset, irritable if not employed. organic it.
So how to stimulate that feeling of happiness of customers?
Businesses are successful and dominant in the market because they are willing to innovate, create and adapt, quickly grasp the pain of customers to turn into a great money-making idea.
Some common mistakes when referring to customers’ pain points:
– Most of us only see customer problems from the subjective perspective of our business and impose that on the products / services provided and force customers in the way we want. This is how to sell what we have, not what customers need.
– Imagine the pain of a small number of customers is also the pain of the entire target customer segment. This leads to the feasibility of not effective business ideas. Instead of taking care of the main customer segment, we put our efforts into following “lost cows”.
– Businesses often identify the common pain that everyone can see, leading to your company’s competitive advantage is not high, the product does not have superiority compared to competitors. You should have a deep understanding of your client’s pain points to develop into a Unique Selling Point or a unique selling point.
You need to remember that, just evoke the needs of customers, make them want to own it, want to experience it, no matter how your product, they will make a buying decision very quickly.
Ways to identify pain points of customers
After learning what pain points are, I will show you some ways to identify pain points of customers that I have experienced after years of rolling on the market:
1. Concertize customer pain: Help your clients realize their pain as specific as possible. Ask them the next intriguing questions for their judgment, the deeper they are, the deeper the root of the problem is. Many of the clients I consult with Lean, all they need to do is solve a few critical bottlenecks, or don’t know how to do it right in their very specific context. For example, how to calculate wages, reward quality productivity in a labor-intensive garment industry, or how the environment primarily uses automated machines?
2. Identify barriers of customers when buying: What prevents or slow customers to make their decisions?
3. Identify undesirable results, issues, characteristics of customers.
4. Manage employees well and ask your own sales staff to advise you: More than anyone else, they directly interact with customers, better understand the secret pain that customers are having.
5. Talk, chat with existing customers: They are the people who have been using your product, which means that your product has partly solved their pain. So take advantage of this wonderful relationship to get real insights from customers. Since then improved to be able to meet more potential customers.
6. Talk to potential customers: For this audience, this is also a way to remind them of the pain they are facing and your solution can help them overcome it. If these pains match your current customers, then your product is absolutely excellent. In case the information does not match, you also have useful ideas to improve your products and services.
7. Research competitors’ solutions: This is also a way to help you know which customers are targeting the pain of customers? What is their solution. Thereby further analysis and improvement to your solution becomes unique and has a better competitive advantage.
What do customers have for Pain Points?
– Pain point of productivity: Current products are consuming too much time of customers when using. They need the simplest time saving and optimization solution with the best results.
– Pain point about procedures and procedures: Currently, the processes and procedures of your company are cumbersome and complicated, making it difficult for customers to access and use? They need a simple – effective – quick solution.
– Pain point about finance: Finance is not a personal problem. Customers always expect to use the best products with the lowest cost. It would be great if your company had the solution to this pain.
– Pain point of support: Customers do not receive thoughtful support from the company in consulting products until the time of purchase and even after they have purchased your goods (after-sales policy). forever, shipping, return and exchange policies …)
Finding the pain is not enough, the key is to identify the pain level of the customer to make a decision to prioritize investing in the solution that works immediately:
Identify the pain points of your clients’ important jobs for any business.
Of course, knowing which pain is really important in your customers is extremely difficult and challenging, but don’t be discouraged, this will lead to improvement through every interaction and try experience with customers.
With each of these, you list your client’s pain and organize its order, from average to extremely severe. It will become a complete measure for you to collate and customize according to each stage. Just touch the right pain points, then that’s when we count the money tired.
Lean also has a huge waste that is redundant to customer requirements. In many cases, just doing to 6/10 or just 2 features is enough to solve the pain point of the customer. But we spend a lot of time, effort, money to make up to level 8, 9 or more features that customers do not really need.
Identifying what pain points are and the priority level to address each pain point of customers is extremely important to the survival of the business. If you are still struggling to clarify what your client’s pain points are, start working on it.
Do not be afraid to leave information in the relevant section, Duc is ready to share my experiences around the topic of discovering pain points of customers and how to apply Lean to solve each pain point one by one.
OPEX Consulting – Operational Excellence
