How to Identify Recurring Customer Pain Points on Digital Channels
Brooke B. Sellas
Top 100 CMA Influencer & Strategist, 2024 | Leading Social Care Consultant | International Speaker | Digital CX | Social Media Listening | Horse Mom
Understanding customer pain points is crucial for any business that wants to improve customer experience (CX) and drive growth.
These pain points, or challenges that customers regularly encounter, directly affect their satisfaction and loyalty. And now, with social media, your customers are more vocal than ever!
On the flip side, this means your businesses has access to an incredible amount of data from digital channels such as social media, websites, and email.
In this post, we will explore how to identify recurring customer pain points on digital channels, which can help your business address customer concerns proactively and improve overall satisfaction.
What Are Customer Pain Points?
Before diving into the “how,” it’s important to understand what customer pain points are.
These are specific problems, frustrations, or challenges that customers encounter while interacting with your brand. Pain points can arise at any stage of the customer journey, whether during product discovery, the purchasing process, or post-sale support.
There are different types of customer pain points:
Your recurring customer pain points are those issues that come up repeatedly across multiple customer interactions, often indicating a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.
Identifying Recurring Customer Pain Points
Understanding recurring customer pain points is essential because it allows your business to make informed decisions on how to improve the customer journey.
When left unresolved, these pain points can lead to …
Conversely, solving these problems can lead to improved customer loyalty, increased revenue, and a better competitive edge.
By the way, below is the customer churn formula visualized by Hubspot. Get to know it, love it, and live by it!
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Digital channels like social media, chatbots, and email provide a goldmine of information, making it easier to spot trends and recurring issues that your customers face.
The key is to tap into these channels effectively and analyze the right data.
Using Social Media to Identify Customer Pain Points
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram have become the go-to places for customers to voice their opinions—both good and bad.
This makes social media one of the most powerful tools for identifying recurring customer pain points.
Social Listening
Social listening involves monitoring social media platforms for mentions of your brand, products, or services. It allows you to track conversations, hashtags, and keywords related to customer experiences.
By implementing a strong social listening strategy, you can quickly identify recurring complaints or issues.
For example, if you notice multiple tweets about slow response times or dissatisfaction with a specific feature of your product, these recurring mentions highlight a significant pain point.
Fun Fact: You can also compare your own brand sentiment to the sentiment of your top competitors, like the (real life) example for one of our luxury appliance brands below.
We like to dig into these negative conversations around competitors and see how we can use that voice of customer (VoC) data for a differentiated marketing campaigns. So fun!
Try tools like can help you streamline this process:
Direct Customer Feedback
Another way to gather insights on customer pain points from social media is by encouraging customers to provide direct feedback through comments, surveys, or posts.
Trust me, most of the time you don’t even have to encourage this feedback – they’ll happily tweet it to you. For example, this unhappy customer of Dyson bought a brand new vacuum and was less than pleased.
Did Dyson see this? Did they care? Do we know if they collected this direct customer feedback?
Nope. And neither does the rest of the world … because they never responded. Or, at least they hadn’t by the time I wrote this post (3 days later).
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The above example is what we call BAD BRAND BEHAVIOR! That’s because engaging with your audience and responding to their concerns publicly helps you gain a clearer understanding of the challenges they face. Similarly, it lets the world know you care.
By regularly reviewing social media conversations, you can identify patterns that highlight recurring pain points and develop strategies to address them.
Utilizing Website Analytics to Identify Pain Points
Your company’s website is another valuable source of information for identifying customer pain points.
Website analytics can reveal critical insights into user behavior, showing where customers might be encountering obstacles.
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Analyzing Customer Behavior on Your Website
Tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar provide detailed information about how visitors interact with your website. By reviewing user flows, bounce rates, and conversion data, you can pinpoint where customers are getting stuck or abandoning their journey.
For Instance, if you notice a high drop-off rate at a specific point in your checkout process, it could indicate that the process is too complicated or not user-friendly.
This could be a recurring customer pain point that needs attention.
Heatmaps and Session Recordings
Heatmaps and session recordings offer a more granular look at customer behavior on your website.
These tools show where users are clicking, scrolling, or hesitating, helping you visualize where frustration or confusion might occur. If you notice that many users are frequently clicking on a non-clickable element, this could signify a usability issue that leads to frustration.
Below, you’ll see a nifty heatmap from Hotjar showing how people view our homepage. Notice how the blue turns to a bright yellow on the far top left, my picture, and just underneath ‘read our book’ — interesting to see where users train their eyeballs!
By identifying these recurring behaviors, you can better understand which elements of your website are causing customer pain points and make targeted improvements.
Leveraging Email Data to Discover Pain Points
Email is a powerful, direct channel to gather insights about customer pain points. Whether through customer support emails, post-purchase surveys, or email marketing campaigns, you can collect valuable feedback that points to recurring challenges.
Customer Support Emails
Analyzing customer support emails can help you identify the issues that customers face after purchasing your product or service. Look for recurring themes in the problems they are experiencing.
For example, if you frequently receive emails about product defects or billing issues, these are clear indicators of recurring customer pain points.
Organize these issues into categories and assess which ones occur most frequently. This will give you a clearer view of where improvements are needed.
Post-Purchase Surveys
Another method for identifying customer pain points through email is by sending post-purchase surveys.
After a customer completes a purchase, follow up with a short survey that asks them to rate their experience. Include open-ended questions to allow customers to voice their frustrations or concerns.
For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand, you can use Shopify or other tools to follow up with your customers after they’ve made a purchase.
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Analyzing these responses will help you identify any recurring pain points in the post-purchase experience, such as delivery delays or product dissatisfaction.
Implementing Chatbots to Track Customer Pain Points
Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular on websites and social media platforms as a means of providing instant customer support.
They are also a great tool for gathering data on customer pain points in real-time.
Chatbot Logs
By reviewing chatbot logs, you can see which questions or concerns come up most often. Chatbots can automatically track the types of inquiries they receive, highlighting recurring issues.
For example, if many customers are asking about a specific product feature or facing similar technical difficulties, this could signal a larger customer pain point that needs to be addressed.
Additionally, in another example from Sprout Social, you can tell which of your customer pain points in your bot’s quick menu is receiving the most “love” or “opportunities for improvement” (as we like to put it!).
Proactive Support
In addition to identifying customer pain points, chatbots can be programmed to offer proactive support.
For instance, if a customer appears to be struggling with a particular step in the checkout process, the chatbot can offer guidance or a solution before the customer becomes frustrated.
This not only helps solve the issue in real-time but also prevents it from becoming a recurring pain point. And, y’all! Time saved is money earned!
Taking Action on Identified Customer Pain Points
Identifying recurring customer pain points on digital channels is an essential part of improving the overall customer experience.
From social listening to website analytics, customer emails, and chatbot interactions, digital channels provides endless opportunities to gather insights.
Once you’ve identified the most common pain points, the next step is to prioritize and address them. Whether it’s simplifying your checkout process, improving product quality, or enhancing customer support, taking action on recurring customer pain points can lead to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
By consistently monitoring and addressing these issues, you’ll not only resolve immediate problems but also prevent them from recurring, leading to a better customer experience and a stronger brand.
PS: Don’t be a Dyson!
Howdy! 👋 I'm happy you're here. I mostly write about customer experience -- including acquiring & retaining customers -- through social media. 💚 To see more posts like this, be sure to follow me here on LinkedIn or subscribe to our monthly newsletter, From Lost to Loyal: How to Make It Right When CX Goes Wrong (same name, more in-depth content!).
Branding & Marketing Consultant I Build Consumer Brands & Messaging that Resonates & Engages with Your Target Audience
2wWow... I'm all about identifying these, but never thought about them primarily fitting into these categories As I go in to 2 really big projects to close out the year this is EXTREMELY helpful. As always you and the team are rockstars Brooke B. Sellas
I help small and mid-sized companies connect with their customers.
4wI hadn't thought about it in this way but now that I see it, you're right. Great observation and thanks for sharing. You just made my life a little easier.