Intro

How to Identify Your Customer Pain Points (For Your SaaS Customers)

You’re in the market to offer products or services, solve customer pain points, make sales, and grow business revenue. But what if you don’t know what your target customer problems are, how will you solve them effectively and keep generating repeat sales from your customers?

Well, understanding your target customer's pain points is the first essential for the success of any business. This guide will show you ways you can use to understand your SaaS customer pain points so you can deliver the best solutions to solve their pain points.

What are Customer Pain Points?

These are needs a customer has that are not yet met. They are specific challenges that your customers face and want to solve using your business products or services. For example, a client could lack enough time to market their services on social media which is a pain point.

They can instead solve that pain by buying a scheduling tool to schedule the content and send it out at the right time to engage prospects.

Why You Need to Identify the Pains

• To market to the right target audience. You don’t want to offer your products or services to the wrong target audience. Knowing customer pains helps reach the right audience who needs your help, ensure more lead conversions, and improve business sales and revenue as you’re reaching prospects who need the value you offer to solve their challenges.
• Offer the best solutions to customers. When you know your target customer's pains, you understand the challenges and give them the best help to solve those pains. You will provide them with the best products or services that align with their needs and effectively solve those needs.
• Market and advertise business effectively. You know where to reach your prospects and how to market the products or services. Understanding the pains gives you insights into ways you will start and market your business to reach the right customers and get them to engage with your business.

How to Identify Customer Pain Points

Do intense market research

1. Use online forums and communities. Your customers visit groups and forums where they engage with others and share information with others. When you follow up with the users on the forums or online community and engage in their conversations, you will get insights into what’s going on in their lives.

That will help you know what they’re facing and give you information you can use to improve the value you offer and get them to use the business. For example, here are some LinkedIn groups where you can engage your target audience as you interact with them to know their pains.

Source: Linkedin

2. Spy on your competitors. You’re targeting the same potential customers as your competitors. Use the data analytic tools to spy on what’s going on with your competitors. That analysis will help you know the challenges their customers face and what they say about the business. Since you offer the same services or products, you can use the information to understand your customers and keep improving the value you offer them to suit their needs.
3. Use Google autocomplete search. Sometimes your target customers will use Google to search for brands that can help them. You can use the Google autocomplete search to give you insights into what your target audience searches when looking for solutions to solve pain points. Not all the suggestions with the auto suggest will be helpful but most of them will give you insights you can use to know your target customer pains. You can also visit the People Ask section of Google to get some insights into the different pain points of the target audience.

Interview your current customers

Contact an online survey from your happy customers. Ask your SaaS customers questions that will give you an understanding of the challenges they face.

Ask questions like

• How does our product help solve your challenges?
• How did they compare our software with competitors?
• What challenges do you encounter when using your products or services?
• How can we improve to offer the best solutions?
• What features of the software are difficult for you to use?
• Do you enjoy and are happy with our onboarding process?

You can include different questions on your survey that will help you get to know them better. Your customers know what they’re experiencing and the challenges they need to solve.

They will be open to sharing them if you interview them as that will help your organization create better ways to satisfy their needs.

Analyze data from customer support

1. Review customer support tickets. As your customers use the business products or services, they will have conversations and questions they need help. All these revolve around the product or service the business offers and the challenges the users face when using the business offers. Use the support tickets to understand the customer's challenges and frustrations with your brand.
2. Use data from your CRM tool. The CRM tool captures the user information which shows the needs they have and how they want to solve them. You can analyze the target prospect information on your CRM tool to guide you in understanding the pains your target customers have.
3. Analyze customer service interactions. Understand how your customers interact with your SaaS brand. One of the best areas to learn this engagement is to see the comments they leave on your blog posts. You can use the Buzzsumo tool to know the blog topics with high engagement rates and then go through them to see the feedback your readers leave. Through all those comments, your target customers can express their satisfaction or frustration with your products or services and give you ideas about the challenges they face.

Monitor engagement on social media channels

1. Identify consumer trends and patterns. The changing patterns and engagement of target customers can show you the pain points they are experiencing. The way prospects consume and engage with your brand will give clues and insights about what they are experiencing.
2. Use social listening tools. This can help you know what your customers say about your business and even their competitors. You will know how the customers mention your brand what they say about your offers and the value you deliver to them. They can’t mention your brand without mentioning your services. Their comments and feedback will give you insights on the kind of challenges they face and you can use that to improve and deliver the best solutions to their pains.

Analyze user behavior

1. Get insights from your A/B tests. You can run a/b tests about your products or services and get feedback from your customers. Vary different features of your tools and see how your potential customers engage with them. Here are some of your features that we can run a/b tests to know your customer pains.

Source: Ranktracker

With the tests, you will know what challenges your prospects are experiencing more and focus your efforts on providing the best solutions for them.

2. Heatmaps and session recordings. These can help show specific target user behaviors when they interact with specific pages on your website. It gives a visual representation of how users engage with your different pages. For instance, when most of the heatmaps target your services page and you’re offering email software, that is a sign they are more interested in your email tool or want to know more about your software and how it can help them.
3. Use Google Analytics and user data. Your Google data can show you how your target customers engage with your business website. What kind of content do they love most? Which landing pages do they visit often? All this information helps gauge the pains your target audience has.
4. Use service demos. Many potential customers sign up for free trial sessions for SaaS softwares. As they try the different software features, they will ask questions that will reveal their pain points because they want to fully know the operation of the business to solve their challenges. After the free trial, you can also set up some questions to help understand your potential customer’s pains better.

Feedback loops and improvement

1. Gather and act on feedback. Feedback from the customers says a lot about your products or services and the value they offer to solve the challenges. Getting feedback will help you know where the customers are facing challenges. There are different ways you can gather feedback from your customers and target customers. One of these feedback ways is testimonials like this one from your customer.

Source: Ranktracker

2. Study reviews of your services. When customers use a product or service, they can leave reviews showing their satisfaction or frustration with the offer. From the reviews left, you can know how the customers enjoyed your business and the challenges that they faced using the business to solve their challenges.
3. Have a live chat on your website. Many potential customers need a helping hand as they engage with a SaaS that can solve their pain points. Having a live chatbot for your business website can help you know more about your potential customer pains. They use the chat to connect and ask questions from different departments of the business to help solve their pains. The questions they ask reveal the challenges they face.
4. Check user engagement and feedback from blog content. Potential customers don’t just reach your business website and make a purchase immediately. They first engage with the different content on the website or social media channels to know more about the products or services. One of those best content types is blog content.

Go through your blog content on different topics you published and see the reader engagement and the feedback they left. Some will ask more questions to help understand your business offers. Such insights give you an understanding of your customers' challenges.

Conclusion

To effectively start and run your business, solve your target customer's challenges, and grow your brand, you should understand your customers well. Use the information provided in this article to guide you in knowing your customers' pain points better and offer the best services to solve their pains.